CORRESPONDENCE.

Taranaki Daily News, 2 November 1921, Page 2

CORRESPONDENCE.

THE QUEENSLAND LOAN. (To the Editor.) Sir, —The point I wished to emphasise in my previous letter was, that through the Tory putting a strangle hold on the commercial expansion of Queensland, that country had lost its political balance, and the result was disastrous to the Tory. The Bulletin clipping forwarded by “Settler” goes' to support my contention. Unless the widening of political power is accompanied by a corresponding commercial extension these two great social factors are out of step. There are several ways of wrecking society, but there is only one way to stabilise it, and that is to give as imany as possible a direct commercial interest in the structure. Co-operation and class settlement are the two great social safeguards of society. The history of social progress is that the business vote is a conscious vote. It declines to follow the pessimist down to Gehenna, or the optimist up to the clouds. Further, it proves that any reform designed to be of lasting monetary value to mankind must be put upon a business basis. From the standpoint of the State it is bad business for any section of the community to have control of the political machine without a share in the financial liability. Given a State, say with an adult suffrage of one hundred thousand, the wealth of which is held by twenty thousand, any section of tte pro-perty-less eighty thousand have only got to get control of the political reins to drive the wealthy class to perdition, not necessarily by assault and battery, but by constitutional method and law and order. This is what is happening in Queensland to-day. A party with no direct financial liability is applying the thumb screws of taxation, and the wild yells of the Tory to let go indicates that he has lost a lot of confidence in constitutional methods and law and order.—l am, etc., FRANK BELL.