LAND, LABOR, LIBERTY AND A LIVING.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 134, 24 October 1912, Page 8

LAND, LABOR, LIBERTY AND A LIVING.

ADDRESS BY MR. EDWARD I < McHUGH. j About a hundred persons attended a ; meeting held in the Good Templar Hall I' last evening for the purpose of listening! • to-an address by Mr. Edward McHnghi' (a British Labor leader) on "Land, Labor, Liberty and a Living." Mr. E. Dockrill presided, and introduced the speaker at some length. At the outset Mr. MclTugh said he had a firmly fixed conviction that if just conditions prevailed the people would be freed from the inconvenience of strikes. Until then they could not be freed from the menace of some people whose actions ran away with their judgment. Referring to the land question, lie said that land was essential to the life of everyone of God's creatures, and to convert that into private property was a fundamental wrong socially. Land did not produce any wealth I except where labor was spent upon it. •If justice was done, the laborer would he the rich man. Labor should be defined in the broadest sense, not merely applied to the man who relied solely on his hands for his living. Land and labor were the primary functions in all production. Labor without land was helpless. Land monopoly was at the root of all our social troubles. In the most complex form of production there were only three factors: Land, labor and capital. The first two were the primary factors. In every community there were just two groups of persons—the people who worked and those who did not. If a person did not toil he must steal! The present universal discontent was at the root of an organised wrong. It was not a matter for passion. Ranting and raving, however, would not make for redress, but rather only unity of action. Nothing was more dangerous than organised ignorance. Think deeply and properly. Had not every child born a right to life? Had not a child born to the poor woman as i good a right to life as a child born with a silver spoon in its mouth? Life could only be sustained as the children and their parents were free to use the land. Land was a God-made element, intended for tlie use of man. Land, water and air belong to no man to the exclusion of others. Private property in land was indistinguishable from private property in human beings. Labor and land were indispensable for the production of wealth. The land could exist without man, but sot vice versa. So, to-day it was a fashionable practice to put fences around land to the exclusion of human beings. Proceeding, he quoted a case in Ireland where 17,000 people were living on land owned bv only eleven men. Dealing with the ''fellows who don't work," he said that if they enjoyed the products of human toil they must either have them as the gift, or without the knowledge of the workers; otherwise, they must take them in the manner of a robber. Any man who did not work for his living was either a beggar, a robber, or a thief! If they solved the land problem they would take away the i vicious thing that made all other evils possible. Land was a gift to all mankind. Was the Creator a respecter of persons? 'Tn the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat thy bread." What was morally wrong could never be politically right. It was a most serious aggression that one man should be able to appropriate, and sometimes hold from use, that which was essential to the life of his fellows. In New' Zealand they had an opportunity of setting an example to the world. What was created by the people belonged to the people as a whole. The land was not wealth; labor was not wealth. They were merely factors in its production. The monopoly of land enabled tha land-owner to appropriate the bulk of the products of labor. Until they re-established the relationship between man and land, the progress must be stagnant. Four hundred and twenty years ago, in England, the agricultural laborer earned sufficient in fifteen weeks to maintain himself and his family for the rest of the year. How many laborers and' mechanics of to-day could perform that now superhuman feat 2, The speaker then went on to refer to the increased cost of living, which ate up any increase in wages. Under the present system they might get, say, an increase of 2s or 3s a week, but before they- received a single shilling 1 of it the price of the necessities of life rose still higher in proportion. Where was New Zealand's common land? Was not its absence evidence that labor was divorced from land. The cunning people had divined that it was unwise to tax the people directly—over the counter. They taxed they' indirectly, without the people being aware of it, so that folk were not able to discover that high prices were the cause of high taxes. That was the trick of the system! The only way to estimate how much the people paid was to impose a direct tax on the land. Abolish all other taxes They would not be necessary. If men only used their influence and their votes in the right direction, they would altel the whole face of things, and sweep away all injustice and inequality of opportunity. If they did not alter the position, they had nobody to blame but themselves. In England, under Mr. Lloyd' George, whose campaign would begin on Saturday, there was a movement which would bring the landlords to their knees and make for the freedom of the masses. It wiis educational work that the masses of the people would have to engage in if they wished to usher in the new order. Trade's unions were a necessity, because the land had been filched from the people. Restore the land to the people, I and there would be no need for them, j just as there were no trades union in England in the reign of Henry VII., when an .agricultural laborer's earning were equal to a purchasing power, of £1451 to-day. j

SHOOT IDEAS, NOT BULLETS, into the heads of the people, continued the speaker. The bulk of men had not time to think. The first thing to be clone was to restore the use of the land and the values of it to the people. This done, a man who was dissatisfied with his wages would have a chance of increasing them by working for himself. Labor was the active factor in every conceivable form of wealth, but no conceivable form of, wealth was possible without land. The proposed direct tax on land was to relieve the farmers of a burden. Public values for public pur-

poses was tlio burden of his song. Tie had come there for the purpose of shocking them into thinking. Until they realised the God-made law which it was their duty to obey, they would have to continue to face all the present social problems. Touching 011 another point, he said the primary function of a Government was to prevent the aggression by one man on another, particularly in regard to the appropriation of land, j Concluding, he stressed the point that it was not free-trade nor protection which made for poverty or prosperity: it was the land! There was poverty, and there was crime in England, but the , trime was the result of poverty, and pov- : erty was the result of lard monopolisa- , tion.

RATING ON UNIMPROVED VALUE. Mr. A. Withy, organiser of the Land Values League, next addressed the meeting, applying to the facts and figures of New Zealand the precepts laid down by Mr. McHugh. The people were not out, he said, to put special taxation on the farmers or on any other class. There were two classes of farmers—the farmer who farmed the land, and the farmer who farmed the farmer! The man who merely owned the land produced nothing. Proceeding, he expounded the ethics of single-tax, stating that his party was out for justice, and justice (or righteousness) alone exalted a nation. It was about time they in New Plymouth to' k the rates off the homes of the peopi;• .and put them on the land values—he referred to the necessity for rating on unimproved value. He pointed out how, in Gisborne, before the advent of rating on unimproved value, the rates on workers' cottages on one side of a certain road ranged from £4 to £5 per quarteracre section. On the other side of the road, however, were twenty-seven acres of ''idle" land in one block, and on this the speculator was paying only Is Id on the quarter-acre! When this and other similar instances were brought home to the people of Gisborne they rose up and substituted rating on unimproved value for the old unjust system. The result was that the rates on the workmen's cottages went down to £1 per quarteracre, while those on the speculators' land correspondingly went up. In urging New Plymouth to adopt /the system, he said that already this year two counties and aix boroughs had gone over to rating on unimproved values, and a number of other boroughs were conteniT plating a similar step. It was for New Plymouth to follow suit. If the system was adopted throughout the Dominion there would be a big decrease in the cost of living. Speaking in another connection, Mr. Withy 'sought to show that Protection did not increase wages. Over a million people in New Zealand were being taxed, 'by means of Customs duties, for the benefit of less than 25,000 persons—that was all there were—employed in protected industries. Both speakers were accorded an excellent hearing, and were heartily thanked for their addresses.