THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 1906.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8233, 10 September 1906, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 1906.

Mr George K. Sims, whom no one acquainted with his writings will accuse of want of sympathy witn the poor, is contributing a series of articles to a London paper showing how harshly and unfairly tbe middle classes are being treated in the altruistic and socialistic movement to better the conditions of life for two classes only, the working class and the pauper class. Squeezed between tbe capitalist party on the one side and the labour party on tbe other, the brain-worker, the shopkeeper, and the man with tbe limited income are, he writes, rapidly hav-

ing their vitality crushed oaf; of them. For it must be remembered that, as the pressure of the capitalistic party icoreises on one side, so do the demands of the labour party increase on the other. The clerk, the shopkeeper, the professional mad, and the man with a small, fixed income sees rents rising as rates and taxes increase. Every day these unfortunates are called upon to contribute more and more to the increased comfort of one seotion of the oommumty, while another seotion of tbej community forces up the cost of many of the necessaries of life. It is only when you have conversed with the rank and file of the socialist party that you can appreciate the utterly mistaken notions which are entertained with regard to the middle classes. To the radical working mau in England, to the trade unionist, to the orators of the working men's clubs, everybody who is not a hard worker is a capitalist, or is to te ranked with the capitalists as an object cf attack. What the word "bourgeois" meant to the French Revolutionists is exactly what the word "capitalist" means to a oertain seotion of the labour party. The working man earning from £2 to £4 a week represents labour; the olerk earning 30s a week, the little shopkeeper whose profits are not a hundred a year, the brain-worker, and the professional man who may only make two or three hundred a year, all are capitalists in the sense in whioh the word is used for the purposes of political warfare. Sense of proportion does not exist in many of the audiences who gather to hear inflammatory addresses by the leaders of militant socialism or the chosen chief of the labour movement. Mr Sims declares that this organised attempt to squeeze the middle classes has been indulged in to suoh an extent that it has become a national peril, and that "the constant exploitation of tne middle classes is making it more and more difficult for the lesslprosperous members to maintain their independence, and they are being gradually reduced from the position of contributors to that of receivers."