FREE SPEECH.

Taranaki Daily News, 26 July 1919, Page 9

FREE SPEECH.

IN A TORONTO FORUM. I HOW HECKLERS ARE TREATED. "Shoot the landlords!" This expression, writes 11. Dickenson in tho Toronto Globe, was hurled at one of tha speakers in cna of the Toronto Forums recently. The utterance was that of a Socialist hurled at a Single Taxer. "I took tho trouble to look into the meetings of the three city Forums that have sought to serve the public during the past winter —the Open Forum, the People's Forum," continues the writer, "and 1 went as a Liberal with an open mind, willing to learn anything any class had to teach and determined to insist on the Liberal Party doing what it could to redress any legitimate grievance that I found. It did not lake me long to discover that it was the intention of the anarchist or revolutionary wing of the Socialist Party to capture or exploit the whole of the three Forums. It mattered not what the Forum management proposed for discussion—by skilful manoeuvring they could swing the discussions so that the J?ussian'Bolshevik or 'might is right' Gorman school of Socialism would almost monopolise the time. Especially was this true in the earlier meetings. It was with pleasure that I noted the skill of the chairman of the Open Forum in the handling of this class, and as the season advanced it \v:ts amazing the progress made in such things as respect for the chair, order in the discussions, etc. BOLSHEVIK AUTOCRATS.

"The first meeting J, attended I diallanged the Bolshevik intention to supplant majority rule by autocratic rule of those who did manual labor. I had a dozen immediately after my scalp. Any person too old to work, they maintained, was too old to vote. It is the intention to let what they call the proletariat monopolise this voting. Theoretically they will.go one better than Dr. Osier who would have those over a certain a<re take themselves off by suicide. These wonderful idealist? would pension everybody that physicians said Here unable J,o work. The landlords they would shoot as do the Russians. 1 heard one physically weak member of the Socialists proletariat solemnly de> clare that he had worked for a" long time, and that he wanted to do some of the bossing now. Then they are intensely international. A Gorman is as .{rood as an '(englishman or a Canadian if ha only will swear by tyeir shibboleth.

'■' After a winter's study I ham come to one positive conclusion, and that is that the profits from Labor will have to cease go-in;; into the pockets of the owners of Capital, le"ss a too often miserable pittance, j'olept wage, to the work.-r. The surplui? after this wage pittance and a decent dividend on capital are paid will have to be more equitably divided. Let Lloyd l>eorje suggest that Capital and Labor lorai a Parliament of their own to fix the proper wage rate, the proper dividend for Capital, tha destruction of watered stock, the squitablc division of surplus profits, and all such questions "All existing or budding political parties :n their coming convention* will have to 'sit up and take notice' that there is a something more needed in this than the taking into their serious consideration.' The 'tariff fat' and the 'profiteering fat' are "also both in tho fire, also the cheaper, transportation of commodities the proletariat and others needs " .