CATCHING VOTES.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9044, 1 February 1908, Page 4

CATCHING VOTES.

The sincerity of Sir Joseph Ward in the matter of immigration is seriousiy questioned by the "Evening Post," which usually sponsors everything the right hon. gentleman says or does. That is bad enough, coming from such a source; but the "Post" goes further and attributes that want of sincerity to a desire to catch votes by -the placation of the Labour Unions, who hate immigration as his Satanic Majesty is supposed to hate holy water. The Premier at the Im perial Conference stated that New Zealand in years to come would be capable of carrying twenty millions of people without any difficulty, and mentioned that the present population was under a million. In other placesSir Joseph has frequently referred to the necessity for increasing the population, and our contemporary pertinently asks what the Government is doing to encourage immigrants: to bring to New Zealand their muscle and intelligence, brawn and brain. It replies to the query thus: —"The answer is given by the RegistrarGeneral's. figures: Practically nothing. And if we ask the question, What does, the Government intend to do, the answer is again, Nothing--or nothing, at least, until the general elections are over.. Immigration is not popular with a section of voters; and statesmanship inevitably is subordinated to the necessity of: retaining and eaining votes." Our contemporary is perfectly right. Votes are unhappily the main consideration just at the present time. The General Election is too close at ban J to ignore them. Hence the action of the Premier and Minister of Labour iir the re,cent mining difficulty, and the utter hopelessness of any expectation that the question of immigration will be dealt with in a comprehensive maimer in the near future.

Speaking at the thirty-eighth; anniversary dinner of the Institute of Chemistry recently, Lord Justice Fletcher Moulton. dealt with the question of what the 1 " spread, of knowledge would do;. He expressed a hupe that some day,, as industrial science went on and got further and further removed from the old ways which were known to the people,, the Board, of Inland Revenue would, somehow or other be interposed between the manufacturers and the unskilled and uninstraeted public;, in order that it might save the- confusion between two radically distinct things—improved technology, which was the salvation of our manufacturer*, and adulteration, which was their ruin. "It required a skilled tribunal/' said his Lordship,, "to hold the balance between the two, but unless we succeeded in doing it we must either fall behind in the race or must be open to the reproach of not keeping to the laws of commercial morality." Speaking of the Board of Agriculture, he said "if . that Board could diffuse among the real workers of the soil of this country the knowledge whic i chemists had accumulated for it there would be a much brighter future for English agriculture. In the future the race .vould ba to the wise, and that nation would have the brightest future which contrived most successfully and speedily to introduce into the life of the people the knowledge which chemistry was perpetually winning for the world." Here is a suggestion that our Government might well act upon. —