THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. FRIDAY, JUNE 1, 1906.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8153, 1 June 1906, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. FRIDAY, JUNE 1, 1906.

The Premier of New Zealand id really enjoying a very good time in Australia, and is being duly honoured by the people of Australia as the leading statesman of New Zealand should be whenever he visits our cousins of the island continent. That this country i« being advertised by Mr Seddon's visit will, no doubt, be candidly admitted by one and all; but that the advertisements are altogether true will be, probably, only believed by those Australians, whose knowledge of this country aoeß not border on the intimate. Experienced New Zealanders will merely "wink the other eye." At one of the functions held in his honour Mr Seddon said that at no time had he received a greater reward than that aocorde.l him by

that vast assembly. It waa a reward that no wealth could purchase. To live and be in the hearts of the people nerved him on to greater efforts in the interests of broader humanity. His great love was for New Zealand and its people, and nothing would rejoice them more than to feel that what the people had done had its reward and appreciation in Australia. The credit was not only due to him and those who laboured with him, but to the people, who had worked out to some extent their own salvation, and solved the problem of society. Mr Seddon explained the labour legislation, in New Zealand, the laws for the protection of ohildren, also those relating to the unemployed, factories, and old age pensions, and his annuity scheme. * * * ■» A dazzling programme, surely, and one that looks beautiful on paper, and the position is now as ever. There has not at auy time been very much the matter with the programme of the Liberal Party—and, by the way, Mr Seddon can scarcely claim that he had very much to do with the creating of the programme—but the administration of the Government canuot be j justified, not even made to appear progressive by the most skilful of pleaders. While Mr Seddon is declaring in Australia, and congratulating himself enormously upon the alleged fact, that New Zealand is really the working man's paradise, and the home of all that is good and true, and noble and delightful, our Wellington morning contemporary publishes an article that is most depressing reading. The article in question deals with the housing problem and reference is made to the position of affairs in Wellington. Our contemporary remarks: "Rents and the cost of living have risen -with wages, and far in excess of wages; and the object of a free table, and State coal, and workers' homes is to restore the proper economic ratio that excessive prices of land have so far upset." * * * * Just what "the proper economic ratio" may be need not here be considered, though we] shoald be Interested to have a definition of "the proper economic ratio." Our contemporary blames the increase in land values solely for the generally increased cost of living—that is, of course, absurdity, pure and simple. It proceeds, however, to quote a return, Compiled by the Wellington Timber Yards Union, giving the ratio of workers' rents to wages in Wellington, and from this it would appear that the ratio is no less than 38 per cent., a state of affairs that is little short of alarming. Oar contemporary goes on to say that "in the returns of some other trade unions, one man, earning £75 a year, is shown to be paying £SO a year rent; another is paying the same rent out of £IOO a year; there is another man paying out of £l4O a year £SO rent. Thus is ushered in the era of subtenancy, or joint occupation, which is the fount and origin of the overcrowding evil and of the housing problem. The main objection urged to the tenement system is the destruction of home life. Joint occupation has the same disadvantages, without any of the advantages, which a regulated tenement system confers. It is hard ta see what use it is to talk about home life in quarters where it is already nou existent or hopelessly undermined." As a matter of fact the chief cause of the increased cost of living is due to the extravaganoe and non-progressive oharaoter of the Government. Ihis is clearly manifest in the heavy and increasing taxation whioh the people of this country have to bear. The policy of wholesale borrowing—and it has been wholesale borrowing, there is no doubt about that—was justifiable, indeed very desirable, on one ground only, and that was that the borrowed millions were properly expended—and that expenditure could only justly be in one direction, viz., the development of the country by the carrying out at a rapid rate of the most important colonial works, and of all undertakings, in regard to which there is no doubt but that they would be of colonial benefit.

Did Mr Seddon tell the people of Australia that railway construction in his oountry had been neglected, and* that in view of the specially favourable opportunities that the present Government have had to push on this most important of colonial works that their record in connection with it was noshing less than a orying shame, and bowling dißgraoe? Did he tell the people of Australia that despite the tremendous increase in the publio debt that no really vigorous aotion had been taken in regard to the settlement of the people on the land, or that the cost of living had greatly increased, and that this increase is particularly severe unon a great body of people who are not protected by arbitration court awards, and who are, practically, powerless to obtain immunity from ministerial] extravagance? Did the Premier tell our Australian cousins that many workers iu this country are largely

robbed of the benefits of the Arbitration (Jouifc, owing to the increased cost of living, doe, chiefly, to ministerial mal-administration, and that golden opportunities were usually talked about instead of seized and utilised to the utmost advantage, and that to describe the administration of the Government as progressive would be simply faroioal. , Did Mr Seddou tell the people of Australia, these things, or did he simply—to uso a colloquialism—"talk flam" to them. A brief study of tfce cable messages published during the last few days past should convince the impartial reader upon the point in question.