The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 1911. WHAT THE PEOPLE OWE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 70, 13 September 1911, Page 4

The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 1911. WHAT THE PEOPLE OWE.

On every hand in New Zealand there is prosperity. No one- lies awake at night with the nightmare of his share of, the National Debt before him.- It has been carefully worked out that every man, woman and child in New Zealand, owes £76 odd to the money-lenders* and that as all of us will be underground long before the National Debt is wiped oIT, we are hanging a load round' the nocks of our successors that will be i grievous indeed. " But, stay! Sup'posc the people of this generation refused to borrow moAey for the building of railways, and roa.ds and bridges, for'the buying of land, for the supply of power' and the extension of industries, what sort of antediluvian fossils would our have been? . The Premier has said that the end of the public works policy js in sight. If the end of the bridging aiid loading and railroading and ]and buying is in sight the end of the era is also on the skyline. Noliody who docs not distort facts for .political ends believes that the New Zealandef is a poor downtrodden person who is faced with this terrible debt. Hie largest proportion of the monfy owed by the people of New Zealand'is hard'at work producing revenue. To perpetually argue that it is sheer wickedness to borrow money for the development of the country is to perpetually argue that mud is better than metal for roads, that large- estates with two men and a sheep dog on are more valuable to the country than a close settlement of 500 families, that a bullock dray is an infinitely superior vehicle than a train of trucks drawn by two that the stage coaches should never have 'been allowed to be superseded, that telegraphy is a; mistake while hacks can be used, and that telephones are a luxury 'highly disadvantageous to everybody. It is, of course, perfectly obvious to the citizen who lives in an area administered by a local body that his town would get on much better if local bodies could get 110 cash for development. It will also be obvious that town development, internal communication by rail or road, cutting up of great areas, and so on are wicked waste of money. Those are at least the implied beliefs of the stick in the mud party which persistently counsels progression without cash and advances to the rear. Our unfortunate sons and daughters will have to pay a portion of the money wfc have borrowed. ' They will not sit up at nights crying over it any more than we do. We shall leave behind us substantial pfoof. in public works and solul assets of- the wise expenditure of tliis borrowed money. These public works will, as time goes on, become increasingly profit producing. The Budget programme is one that will need borrowed money to carry out. Many items of the programme already touched on are sound business propositions that must add to the material advantage of the .people. The splendid schemes undertaken by the Government could never have been accomplished if the cry of "Don't borrow!" had been heeded in the years gone by. The increase of the National Debt in order to supply money for revenue producing works cannot increase the indebtedness of the individual, but it can increase his prosperity, his earning power, find th.it of the community at large. The "burden" that nobody is sitting up crying about has decreased per head during the past few years, and nobody knows whether it lias increased or decreased until politicians worry him with the figures. What tlic poor sufferer who rides in a railway carriage instead of a bullock dray does know is that New Zealand is a marvel of productiveness because of the expenditure of money that represents our "burden." The country is creeping out of the slough of obscurity because of the money borrowed for the purpose, and which money lias been the basis of the creation of our national wealth. All the average man needs to ask himself in regard to the National

Debt nightmare is, "Have there been compensating advantages to New Zea-1 land in the use of this money ? Could I wis have reached-the position we occupy to : day on dur-own?" The Opposition has discovered with remarkable acumen 1 that the Premier's Budget" is an "election Budget." Constructive, statesmanlike measures designed for the advance of the country and its people will help along nil election without doubt and make the poor overburdened sufferers forget the intolerable £75 they owe to the money-lender, who isn't worrying about it and who is, unlike, the little New Zealander whose business is to foul his own nest, helping thiff fine little country to an enviable place among the producing nations. If political party whining and perpetual' mud-slinging would only cease while the country went on with its work, even the most fluent Tory of them all would forget that lie owed the money lender that £75, and would admit the-sum was working very hard indeed to wipe itself out.