CORRESPONDENCE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 59, 8 May 1907, Page 2

CORRESPONDENCE.

THE WORKERS' FRIENDS. To the Editor. Sir,--Mr. Okey, in his replies, asserted that five shillings per day twenty year.; ago was better than eight or nine shillings per day now, the inference being that the cost of living had risen so much. I know ail idea of the kind exists, l,ut is it true? All lines of groceries are cheaper now than at the time mentioned; ditto, kerosene, coal, milk, bread and clothing. Rent may be a little higher; in a great many cases it is not. firewood is dearer, of course, as are potatoes, the latter because of the blight, Mr. Okey also said that the cry that the Opposition would cut down wages was an election cry, and contrary lo fiut; that the Opposition had never had a chance to treat the working man, and so they did not know who their true friends were. Mr. Okey conveniently torgol that the Opposition were in power from 1887 to the early part of 1891, and that I his time was the era of soup kitchens, shelter sheds, relief works at a halt a crown per day, and a large exodus ul flu> working men of the colony. Workers! Mr. Okey and his party have only one thing to buy, and to buy it as cheaply as possible, viz., your labor. lon have only one thing to' sell—your labor, and it is up to you to get the highest price possible for it, The issue is clear. T am, etc., WORKER. Xcw Plymouth, Hay 7. «

Mi!. MALONE'S CANDIDATURE.

To the Editor

Sir.—ln your issue of yesterday "K\Straii'ordite" twits Mr. Malone with being a supporter of the Opposition party some ten years ago, and with saying (at a bnnijuet, forsooth!) that iie was against the Government. I know the candidate fairly intimately, and I do not think- that he has ever made any pretence of ever having thought fit to alter his political creed within the course of a decade. If such a tergiversation as quoted be a political sin, then I say he has sinned in the good company of the most; brilliant statesmen in the political arena of Great Britain within the last half-century, namely, Gladstone, Disraeli, and Chamberlain. Another cxStrat lordite-on-Avon of immortal fame it not who wrote, '"Consistency, a tool's virtue." Lincoln lias avererd that two classes of men only never change their convictions—fools and dead men; under which category comes "Ex-Strat-fordite"? I am etc,

"EVOLUTIONIST."