THE WEEK THE WORLD AND WELLINGTON.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9156, 1 August 1908, Page 6

THE WEEK THE WORLD AND WELLINGTON.

(By Frank Morton.)

The Scarcity o> Orators.—Obkoon 3?ink. -Gambling and the Bookmaker.—The Allegkd Unemployed.

Parliament, as I write, is in Cornmi ctee-of-Supply, and Mr James Allen is in the thick of a speech that bids fair to outlast the tired stars. It's always a very sad thing when a man of brains and more than average shrewdness smothers all his points in a ponderous overlay of dullness. That is the case of Mr Allen. That, indeed, is the case of a somewhat considerable number of the good men and true that form this most democratic Parliament of the world. It is a pity; because, were it otherwise, the debate might occasionally become interesting and so a certain enthusiasm might arise about the government of the country. I have heard Mr G. H. Reid talk amazing nonsense so brightly that hundreds of fairly sane people have been half convinced that he was in earnest. Mr Deakin occasionally m ikes speeches that are all sugar and wind; but his speeches are always very charming and effective. Indeed, over in Australia there are si.ll a lew men with some positive grace of oratory to spice the banality of their politics withal. In New Zealand we have no orators in politics and our humourists are almost as rare as flies in the Arctic. As for makers of epigrams—but there! the mere suggestion is disreputable. Of all amazing and selfish proposals ever dinned into the ears of Ministers, thib insensate demand for the imposition of a prohibitive duty

on Oregon pine strikes me as being one of the most singular. The general matter of the destruction of our trees I touched on a week or two ago. I believe that it would be an excellent thing for New Zealand, in the ultimate result, if in future all timbers were admitted free. I believe that the benefits derived by our saw millers and their men are but as a drop in a bucket when compared with the ocean of evil that must result from the wholesale destruction of our timber. But that is not by any means the only matter to be con ' sidered. The rost of house-building in New Zealand is dangerously high —so high that there is already much overcrowding and a growing grievance of high tents in some of our cities. Cheap timber, though it may seem to be a passing menace to our own little timber-industry, must be of incalculable benefit to the great body of our people. In this matter our workers are not forced into Unfair competition with sweated Europeans or Asiatic labour. American timuer men are paid better than ours, and live more cheaply. Our timber industry, already protected by a duty of virtually 33 per cent., cannot compete with out protection against the American timber-industry, merely because the American millers work more scientifically and with vastly more elfective machinery than ours. But this present plea that the duty of 33 cent, is not adequate reduces the whole thing to the point of farce. Any increase of the duty on imported pine will have the inevitable effect of increasing the already high price of timber in this country. A proportionate increase in the cost of building will follow. Rents, already almost too high for tolerance in some places, will become still higher. It is really time that the Government set its face against the extension of any such retrograde legislation as that demanded. The report of the President of the New Zealand Racing Conference has properly something to say regarding the special legislation in favour of the bookmaker passed last session. As to the folly of that legislation,

general public opinion is now fairly emphatic. Gambling being an evil, the totalisator is an evil; but the totalisator is not nearly so gross an evil as the bookmaker. The totalisator is occasionally liable to abuse, and sometimes (at the\ full of the blue moon) you get an honest, good, and scrupulous bookmaker. I know quite well that in the discussion of this subject of gambling, hypocrisy generally runs riot. If one form of gambling is bad,all forms of gambling are bad; but in the fact that the totalisator is an evil there lies no necessary justification of the bookmaker. That, however, is really net the main issue. The Government last year passed special legislation in order to force the bookmaker on the racing clubs. It might as reasonably have passed a law compelling the Wellington Club to admit all bookmakers to its membership, If a racing club is in any Bense a private corporation, the law that forces bookmakers on the clubs is at best a codified impertienence. As to the comparison of the totalisator and the bookmaker, Sir George Clifford, in that report of his, put the matter rather neatly. "As to the comparative harmlessness of the totalisator and the bookmaker,'* he said, "it may not be useless to reiterate that the former is temporary, silent, and absolutely confined to its purpose, whereas the latter is übiquitous, persuasive, and by no means limited to a singe form of speculation.'' the bookmaker, as a dangerous parasite, a vampire battening on the vicious instincts of society, is absolutely indefensible by any logical and humane method of reasoning. He gives the world nothing in return for food and shelter, and the constant protection of the law it is half his business to evade and handicap. There is no excuse for him, and when the Government turned him (nominally) out of the streets and loosed him (actually) on the racecoursev the Government resorted to a very mean trick to dodge a difficulty and appease sjme foolish clamour. 2 From all the four cities there corned lews of small clamours of the unemployed. With genuine unemployed 1 am deeply in sympathy, because I have upon occasion in years gone by been unemployed myself. But with tha unemployed who meet and clamour, and then turn up their noses at proffered work, I have positively no sympathy whatever. • - A man can claim from his f-'lbws t'le right to work; but he cannot claim the right to pick and ch'wse the work he will do whenever his need of warlc is urgent. If that v/era conceded, there would be little work done in the world, apart from t .e pleasant and easy callings,

and every navvy would be haymaking—four hours a day. The bulk of the New Zealand "unemployed" seems to be of the fastidiously discriminating class. They want work, but they don't want distant work, and they don't want hard work. They want work pitched at them, as it were, over their front fences. They don't want to go into the lonely country, and they shudder at the bare idea of dirty railway-cut-tings. And, since imigrants will go cheerfully to the work that offers, the "unemployed'" have a terrible contempt for our immigration policy. I have never been a reckless partisan of this Government; but the reproach of indifference to the needs of the unemployed is a reproach that cannot truthfully be urged against it. The Government has gone to all lengths—to greater lengths than many economists can condone-to provide work lor the workers. A high tariff wall has been erected for the protection of local trade. Money has been borrowed for the pushing on of some works that should properly have been charged to revenue. But it is all to no purpose. Your typical "unemployed" is a person inveterately dissatisfied, He to stand in the street and be eloquent. He is dreadfully uncomfortable out of town. He is not constitutionally enamoured of work. He is to be found everywhere. You get him in London, siaje by side with men positively starving through inability to get work. You get him in America; though there he is a special type, and during a good part of che year work is hard and suffers much in his proud determination to do nothing. In New Zealand he is utterly without excuse. Labour is still needed here, and tl|e men who will do anything that offeite to make an honest livelihood need not be hungry. It will be fully time to talk about the unemployed problem when the problem really exists.