THE TIMARU ELECTION.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2083, 9 August 1890, Page 3

THE TIMARU ELECTION.

Mr J. M. Twomey addressed a crowded meeting of 700 persons in the Assembly Booms, Timaru, last Wednesday evening. The chair was occupied by Mr George Stumbles, who briefly introduced the speaker. Mr Twomey, after having given expression in feeling terms to the great sorrow he felt at the death of the late Mr Turnbull, asked them to return in his stead as sturdy and as true a Liberal as ho was. It was no use returning independent members. They demoralised politics, and many a Liberal voter was deluded by them forgetting that wherever ‘ there was monopoly and poverty, rich and poor, capital and labor, there were all the elements of Conservatism and Liberalism, and there they would be until such a change was effected in our. social system as would insure a more equal distribution of the good things of this earth.

TAXATION,

The political economy idea of taxation was that there should be vn ~ equality of sacrifice. According to ■. this doctrine the man . worth £SOO ««hould contribute 500 pence, and the man worth £SOOO should pay -5000 pence to the revenue. That was fair and reasonable as regarded property tax, and if so, it must be fair and reasonable as regarded the customs duties, According to'that, if the man of the £SOO paid 500 pence through the customs the man of the £SOOO ought to pay 5000 pence. To do this He would require to drink ten times as much tea, and consume ten times as much of all articles which pay customshouse duties. He could not do it Then, ‘if such # was the disparity between the contributions of the £SOO, and the £SOOO men, what must be the disparity between the contributions of the man who had £IOO,OOO, and the man who had only £l., The man of the £IOO,OOO would want to dnnk IOQ-,000 times as much tea: etc., as the man of the £l, &od if he had the carrying capacity of the Great Eastern he could not do it. Indirect taxation was therefore a graduated tax upon ; the poor, and the only way to equalise matters was to graduate taxation on wealth.

beebaubing the beyenub. According to the report of the Property Tax Commissioner the value of real estate* that is land diminished between 1886 and 1888 by nearly 5i millions. The Levels Station, for instance, had cut down the value of theirlaud by £32,000, and the Property Tax Commissioner said that persons who thus shirked taxation, were . defrauding their neighbors. There-were in this colony 121 persons who owned 7,238,102 acres, valued at £16,065,699,' or an average of £9 4s 5d per acre. There were 34 companies who owned 2,247,439 acres, valued at or an average of £llßs 9d per acre. Now, it was plain to any one this land was disgracefully undervalued,* .and thus these people were, in the!'* language of the Property Commissioner, defrauding their He did not care wbat name they gave;;* it, Land Tax or Property Tax, that would catch these ho would favor it,-and unless they lookedjifter these people they would continue cutting down values until like Mark Train they would claim that the Government was •in their debt instead of their paying taxation. There were £6518,000 lying in the banks that escaped taxation. This' was a disgrace to all parties concerned. / ; , NOTE ISSUE.

The Bank of England paid 3 per cent, for the privilege of issuing paper money; and the rate of discount there varied - from to 5 per cent, Here we give that privilege to banks for 2£ per cent, and their rate of discount is between 8 and 10 per cent. That was suscptible of an increase of taxation.

absentees.

There were 115& absentees who owned £6,234,434 worth of property. Bay w that that sum-yielded interest at the rate of 5 per-cent, it meant that £811,721 14g left the colony annually, or nearly £l>ooo,ooo every three years, New .place that side by side with the same - amount of property ► owned in the colony, and what would he the result. The six millions worth of property owned im the_ colony increased to seven millions in three iears, but the property of the absentee would not increase a penny, because all the profits went to London or elsewhere. The profits of the absentee escaped taxation- the profits of the local owner had to pay taxes on the increase in his, wealth. How any man, rich or poor, could oppose a special tax on absentees he could not understand. He estimated that if large estates, absentees etc. paid their fair’share, two-thirds of the ’ amount raised by the present property tax might be obtained from them without doing the slightest wrong, and thus the tax on industry and the poor might be greatly relieved. mobe population. Taxation could also be reduced by increasing population That could be “one by promoting indnstml develop, ment and settling people on the land. r Sooting from from his own letters m tte Lyttelton Times he dwelt a ength on how the Stowt-Yogel Government were settling the people on the land; how they introduced « rV _.d ftrß 397 capitalist farmers, who had a total capital of £43 785; how thev mtroduce.d the Land Acquisition Bm to spb-divide large estates ; and w they proposed to graduate the property t.x P .o *> to relieve industry

of taxation. That policy was splendidly devised to increase population. What had the present Government done? Between 10,000 and 20.000 people had left the colony. Sir H. Atkinson said only women and children left, and to every woman 18 children went away. The Property Tax Commissioner told them that whereas in previous years the number of persons paying property tax bad increased but between 1886 and 1888 the number decreased by 1499, and that these 1499 persons must .have left the colony. No one who was nbt worth * £SOO paid property tax Averaging these 1499 at £670 a head, they must have taken £1,000,000 away with them.. Then say 10,000,000 persons left, what were they worth ? About £250 each or a total 2£ millions. This may be an eggeration, but it was nearer the truth than Sir Sir Harry Atkinson’s women and children story. They all had an interest in increasing population, for if their present population was doubled their taxation would be reduced by one half. THE LAND, He wished he could read for them the magnificent speech of Mr Ballance, the splendid speech of Mr John McKenzie, that intellectuallyvigorous Scotch farmer, the polished and scholarly utterances of Mr W. P. Reeves, than whom there was not a more thorough democrat in Parliament, not forgetting the eloquent speech of that extremely industrious and able man. Major Steward, and if he could they would never again cast one vote in favor of any one having the slightest tinge of Atkmsonianism. He could, however, only direct their attention to them, and also to the fact that scarcely three new homes resulted from all the land sold in South Canterbury after the great exertion of Major Steward in getting the land open for settlement. In that they had what children get at school, an object lesson. The Minister of Lands went strutting about the country singing a cockie-doodle-doo about the number he had settled on the land. Who were they? Mr John Maclean and Mr George Buckley, of Bank of New Zealand fame, the dummies of land companies, and perpetual leaseholders, who had converted their holdings into freeholds. Had Mr Ballance the administration of this land the thousands who had left the colony would have been settled on it.

BAEGB ESTATES. The speaker here repeated the views he held in 1884, in his maiden speech on large estates, dwelt on the relative merits of a bursting up policy, and the Land Acquisition Bill, and then explained his own proposal: It was to compel large land owners to lease their estates, in suitably-sized farms for 21 yaars at a rental of 5 per cent on the property tax value. This was nothing socialistic or revolutionary, it was what Mr Hay burst was doing and what was done in England —the tenant would get a capital bargain and the State would incur no risk. Men with a small amount of capital could go on the land under the proposed leasehold system. That he thought was the best, but he would support any scheme that would result in land settlement. EETEEKCHMENT. Sir Harry Atkinson claimed to have retrenched to the amount of £291,000. One of his staunchest supporters, Mr Withy, said he had retrenched only to the extent of £174,000. Mr Montgomery, their severest critic, admitted the ,Stout-Vogel Government had retrenched to the extent of £82,000, and they promised further retrenchment to the amount of £IOO,OOO. The Stout-Vogel Government would thus have retrenched to the amount of £182,000 had they remained m office, so the Atkinsonians had nothing to boast of. He showed how the StoutVogel Government had no chance of retrenching when their Civil Service Classification Bill, by which theywould have saved £20,000 was dashed in their faces with the cry of keep the Ministry in and their measures out, Compare that with the way everything was left to Sir Harry Atkinson. The provincial auditors were dismissed and the cost of auditing accounts thrown on local rates; the sinking sinking fund of local bodies was appropriated, the subsidies taken, and a tax of 2d per lb placed on tea to supply subsidies for charitable aid purposes, a. great deal of retrenchment consisted of transfering taxation from the Consolidated revenue to the revenue of local bodies —robbing Peter to pay Paul. He condemned the reduction of members and of their honorarium as the deadliest blow that could have been struck at democracy, nir Harry Atkinson in 1887 said the deficit was £389,000. He reduced expenditure by £291,000, leaving £98,000 to be made up by taxation. To meet this £98,000 he put on £330,000 additional taxation, and now where was the £232,000 he ought to have as a surplus. Muddled because he delayed putting on taxation in 1887, He believed the greater part of the retrenchment was a sham. In 1888 several officers had been dismissed—in 1889113 new appointments were made in the Civil Service. The Native office was to have been abolished, but seven new judges had been appointed. Officers were dismissed one year and taken on the next merely to gull the people into the belief that retrenchrqent had b,een effected.

q?HE beopjse cquESE. Five or six years ago be had pointed out that they were paying out of this colony £4.000,000 a year more than

they were getting into it. He was the first to point this out, and it had a great effect on retrenchment. Had he, however, the management of affairs he would have gone about it m a different way. He regarded the condition of the colony like that of a large estate, the owner of which was expending all his energies in fencing and draining, and neglecting production. Supposing that the owner found he was paying away in interest, etc., £4,00 a year more than he was receiving, what would he do? He would have stopped draining and fencing, and turned his horses, ploughs and men into the reclaimed land and produced sufficient to pay way. Now that is exactly the position of the colony. We have been wasting our energies on public works, and not utilising the land properly. What ought to be done is to give up looking for that will-’o-the-wisp, the ever-vanishing paying point in railways, to turn our attention to the land we have already, reclaimed by means of public works, and to produce as much as possible from it. The policy still was to borrow more to make roads to the backwoods, so that we might go back and settle there. He eaid, “No. We shall utilise the reclaimed land first; it is more than enough for our population, and bye-and-bye when our population increases and we want elbow-room we can then afford to make these roads and bridges better than now, and we shall do it. Meantime if those who monopolise the reclaimed land now want elbow-room let them go to the back-woods.” (Tremendous applause )

ADMINISTRATION,

He next referred to Mr Fisher’s enforced resignation, and gave instances where Ministers were guilty of administrative acts as reprehensible as that of Mr Fisher’s. He quoted from Mr Fisher’s unanswered accusations with regard to rich men who had defrauded revenue being allowed to go free, while poor men were prosecuted ; also to the way the Minister of Lands neglected his duty, by which he threw large estates in the way of the late Hon, Robert Campbell; also to the way in which the law was broken in Shag Valley to throw a large area of land into the hands of the lessee, who was, he believed, Sir Dillon Bell. He characterised the Ward-Hislop affair as an attempt to corrupt the fountains of justice, the most heinous crime of which a Minister could be guilty, and reviewed the Hutchison charges, stating that he felt sure thdt where there was such a large volume of smoke there must be a good deal of fire.

THE LABOB MOVEMENT

Turning to the labor movement he briefly traced the progress of the laborer from slavery through serfdom to a partial freedom, and he claimed th&t labor bad attained its liberty simultaneously with and by the liberty of the Press. Those who sneered at newspaper men and regarded them unfit for election to Parliament ought to remember that no other institution, not even the pulpit, contributed so much to human liberty. Before there was any talk about the subject at all, between two and three years ago, be wrote on the necessity of reducing the hours of labor as a means of improving the condition of workmen and remedying the depression of trade. His idea was that the evils complained of were due to the introduction of machinery. For a long time the world was expanding contemporaneously with the growing use of machinery; America and Australasia were being settled, and the work of building up these new and great communities furnished a demand for labor which counterbalanced the effect of machinery in reducing demand. Now, however, the new roads and railways had been made, the new cities built, and what are those who have done this work to do ? Machinery has facilitated and increased production, and lessened consumption because men were not employed. There were 70,000,000 in Europe and America who never got half enough to eat. Give these enough, and wheat would not be selling at 2s 6d a bushel. Machinery resulted in an expansion of production, and a contraction of consumption, hence over-production, suspension ®f works, want of employment, hunger and misery. The cure was t° ?educe the hours of labor till all men were employed* and then all would share in the blessings of machinery, and the man who would not work when he got it let him be whipped. He would have no mercy on such a man* the man he did sympathise with was the noble father who died of starvation in the London docks the other day, after spending his last penny in food for his children. He then spoke of trades unions, praised them for the reasonable, fair, and honest way they are going to work, and admired the magnificent manner in which the Maritime Council was transacting its business; the council was an honor to manhood, and put the legislature to the blush by the way the sailors of the forecastle came in' and settled the dispute between the pompous officers and the shipowners.

EDUCATION. In view of the social revolution that was taking place they must be careful that the workman of the future was educated as thoroughly aq possible. The coming power, and unless they were well educated they would be bound to make mistakes, and be a cause of commotion, trouble and loss to the State. It was, therefore, the business of the State tp, educate the masses so §a to prepare them for the change

which was surely coming, and no one ought to be left without care in this respect. He would not fix any arbitrary limit at all, but say everyone should be educated “as far as possible.” The present system was susceptible of improvement. Ihe £90,000 or £IOO,OOO a year given to High Schools and College Boards to do what they liked with, should be devoted to scholarships open to rich and poor alike. The wealthy legislators of the past were wise. They put aside large areas of land for their children, while the children of the poor were left dependent on the whims and fancies of Parliament. The whole system should be unified and not a penny of public money given to specially educate the noodlesof therich. Let it be spent on those worth educating, no matter where they came from. In conclusion Mr Twomey again denied that he had come forward to split up votes. He asked them to go home, and in their lodges, unions, and organisations select a candidate, and if he (Mr Twomey) was not wanted, let them tell him so, and he would sav “ My blessing go with you,” Up long as they put into Parliament a man who carried the good wishes of the majority. Timaru, he knew, was truly Liberal to the core, and if they only selected a true Liberal he would not care who he was. But he asked them to make their selection and let him know by nomination day, for if he went to the nomination he would go to the poll, if he split a million votes. He denied that he had merely come there to air his views and display his eloquence. He would ask any of them who thought so to go home and prepare a speech and come to that hall to deliver it, and by the time they had got to the tjwMshold they would exonerate him rrom such a foolish charge as that. Mr Twomey warmly thanked the audience for the patience with which they had listened to him, and sat down amid tremendous applause, after speaking an hour and three-quarters. Another hour was spent in answering questions, all of which were in writing, and at the conclusion Mr Harrop moved, and Mr Worry seconded, a hearty vote of thanks to the speaker which was carried amidst great applause. The proceedings terminated with the usual yote of thanks to the chairman.