The Daily News SATURDAY, JUNE 16. THE OLD FOLKS AT HOME.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVII, Issue 8136, 16 June 1906, Page 2

The Daily News SATURDAY, JUNE 16. THE OLD FOLKS AT HOME.

Several news items from Homo received in the colony lately have supplied food for reflection and comparison. Many things, particularly the arrival of working men from the Old Country, have pointed out to the j average colonial that the New Zealander, in point of position, advantages, opportunity - what you will - is a king to his 011 Country relative. The British Premier recently stated that there were eight million paupers in the Old Country. This is one of the thought-compelling news items. A cable sent word that the British Government will do all in its power to stop sweating in England, Tue law of England seat a laborer to gaol for a year the other day for stealing sixpence worth of turnip tops.

* * * » Toe sweating manufacturer is not sent to gaol, even though he robs men, women, and children, by paying them starvation wages every week, year after year, and grows fat in the process. No person, no Government, with any bowels of compassion, consent to draw bloodmoney, and live luxuriantly, without trying to do something adequate for the wiping out of that fester of paup ism in the " freest land in all the world," Eight million people are tree to starve. One hundred thousuid people aie free to draw over thirty thousand pounds each per frjm t'.ie labor of less fortunate people. A few peers own tens of thousands of acres of land, and diey own the jesple. The Creator lidn't intend that the most virile nation/in the world should have its vitality sapped in order that a few people should d-vell in pampered wealth and droi,i >g luxury.

* * # * | Fjiom the Senate, from the from the pulpit, is heaid the voice of alleged reformers, calling it a sin. Mostly he Senate, the platform, and the pulpit find it is a sin because they aie frightened at the futuie possibilities of disaster to a country where people's vitality, sell-respect, and physique are being sapped by the criminal selfishness of money-grab-bers. Ever .since Goldsmith wrote " The Deserved Village," have villages been wiped out., swallowel in the main by alleged progress. Ever has the insatiable god of greed gnawed the bones of the poor to feed the drones; ever have the children been robbed of food, so that the fat should wax fatter; ever the ceaseless grind )f the poor to make the rich more rich; and ever the empty plititudes jf the rich, the doles of charity, the wkter blanket friend and the yearly teed, playing with the poverty of poverty. * * # #

Tub land is the source of nil wealth. The people who own the laud control the source. The people who supply the motive power, however, are mere took. Centuries of lordly despotism in Britain have robbed the poorer classes of individuality. Centuries of undeifeeding-the results of the sweating operations of the fat-pursed —have sapped the physique. One is thankful that the enterprise of the nation has opened to the myriads of poor people in Britain other lands— Australia, Canada, New Zealand, etc., where the possibility of the enfeebleinent of the Briton is more remote, and where recruiting stations exist for the repair of the injuries done by the hard conditions obtaining in Britain,

Russia is demanding to-day, and will get, greater land freedom than Britain has had since the time of the Conqueror. Prance has the most equitable system of small holdings on earth. The aristocrat is justly treated in Prance, but he is, notwithstanding his position, but a citizen of the Empire, equal only to the peasant with the wooden sabots. No country in the world is, really speaking, less free than Britain, no more land-starved, no jeoplo more hopelessly humble and dependent on aristocratic drones. So deaf to the voice of the people are the territorial magnates that, as in all history, they will heir nothing making for the liberation and the amelioration of the condition of the masses. They allow the conditions to continue because they have existed for hundreds of years.

* * * # Colonials in the greater freedom, the better health, the wider opportunities oll'ered to them, should thank their Maker, and pray this one prayer: Let the land be for the people, and not for the few ; let the child that is born of the laborer's wifo have at least as much chance of food as the child of the Marchioness; let the nation remember that every great country in past hislory that has tottered, has been broken by the luxurious sins of its wealthy drones; and let the people say that he who does not work shall not eat. Then perhaps our own great pareut country, chitain, may be again free.