THE LIBERAL POLICY.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 3025, 23 October 1908, Page 5

THE LIBERAL POLICY.

To the Editor. Sir,—l ask your permission for sufficient space to enumerate the reason why, as a working man, I cannot support the present Administration's policies, which I firmly believe are inimical to the interests of labour. These policies are:—l. Unlimited loans; the public debt is over £67,000,000, and per head of population £67, while Canada's debt is only £2O per head. The Government is wasteful and extravagant, and refuses to practice economy in expenditure; fifty new departments were added to the Government since the inception of th? Ward regime. There is a demand for the creation of more Cabinet Ministers from the politicians who sit upon the Government benches, who are held together by the cohesive power of public pelf, and who are famishing for Cabinet portfolio honours. All this means a large increase of expenditure and consequentely further taxation, and increase of the public debt. The local borrowing which abnormally ipflates land values also removes money from the legitimate channels of industry, hardens the money market, and produces a financial stringency that must ultimately culminate in a severe industrial depression. 2. The Government is wedded to protective tariffs. This system of raising revenue injures the workers, and also the farmers. It compels the latter to sell their products in markets where the prices are fixed by demand and supply in competition with Jjthe world's producers. On the other hand they are compelled to purchase their, supplies in the local market with the prices abnormally enhanced by high protective duties, a.i:d the arbitrary 'fiat, of the Arbitration Court awards. The electors ghoufd not forget that Mr Horr.sby represents this policy, which the Government has embraced at the behest of that apostle of wealth destruction/ the Hon. J. A. Miikr, Minister for Labour. This policy, ako, injures the workers who are employed in the primary industries, viz., milk. ing, cheese - making,' sawmills. navvying, etc. No tariff can be framed to benefit these industries, yet the people who are employed in them are forced to pay a heavytribute in the form of protective duties to subsidise certain exotic industries that ought to be compelled to stand or fall upon their own merits. These in brief are the reasons why, as a former Liberal, £ cannot support a party that is composed of freeholders and leaseholders, of prohibitionists and liquor trade advocates, of antigambling and race-track representatives, of protectionists and freetraders, all harmonised and marching in unison to a rythmic cadence strongly suggestive of a "scratchback" understanding.—l am, etc., FRANK W. BURKE.