OF WHAT GOOD?

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9041, 27 January 1908, Page 4

OF WHAT GOOD?

Everywhere, the Premier tells us, there are remarkable evidences of prospsrity while the financial year, 1906-7 is going to bring a record revenue in to the Government, and an increase of some three-quarters of a million pounds above the- estimate of revenue. The financial position of the dominion is hopeful ar.d satisfactory, and we may, therefore, very properly ask what benefit aye-the masses of the people going to derive from a prosperity, which they hnve helped to-create? - Tlv3 small wage-' earners, the struggling settlers, who toil from daivn till dark, the "genteel" poor, who are compelled to live in a style sadly out of keeping with their means —the great bulk of the people, in fact—what advantages are they going to obtain from the phenomenally prosperous condition of the country? must be many people who say to themselves: "It is all very well for Sir Joseph Ward to declare that the country is prosperous, but we know that we vily taxed. Surely with so much prosperity there should be less taxation." The prosperity, of which the Premier is quite unnecessarily proud, casts a tremendous responsibility upon the Government to put forward every effort to cheapen the cost of living when every circumstance is favourable to achieving the much-desired end. We do not deny that the country is prosperous—we do not deny that the revenue ite a record, but we do affirm that the Government is extravagant, and we do ask that there shall be an end to wastefulness, and a determined effort made to enhance and retain prosperous times.