MAORIS AND EUROPEANS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9616, 9 October 1909, Page 7

MAORIS AND EUROPEANS.

THE INDUSTRIAL STRUGGLE. The Hon A. T, Ngata, lecturing at Timaru, said he had come to the conclusion that the greatest agitators for putting the Maori on the I same footing as the European were thuae who had an eye on the native lands, for that was was insuperably'gbound^ud"*"iTT~"trTe social and economical life of theViative of New Zealand. • The Young Maori party had veryjcarefully considered wers of the opinion'lhat it would'be an in> justice to the Maori'to fput him on the becausetthe average Maori was not as well equipped for the industrial. struggle for life as the white man, and still needed prole tive legislation. It was pleasant in the old days to hear the Mauri praised forjhis bravery, and it was very unpleasant now to him to hear the white rran say the Maori was lazy, immoral, unreliable, though he was afraid there were some grounds for the ptatement, the reas n being that with the advent cfthe white man the former incentives to work and exercise which the Maoris had had vanished. The Young Maori party were convinced I hat in wwk lay the salvation of (he Maori; if they did not work tlniy were doomed to extinction. Where the Maoris had taken this to heart and worked, their numbers, so far from decreasing, had increased, jnd they had prospered. Twenty years ago the Maoris of his own district had become Sirtd of. working for the pakeha, and worked for themselves, with the result that they had about 68,000 acres in ci< ti/ation, and flocks numbering 100,000. It had often been advanced against the Young Maori party that they advocated the fusion of the races but this was not the fact; they merely said that the fusion would inevitably come before long, and they wanted to see it come on the best possible b&sis.