“SANE SOCIALISM”

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 July 1938, Page 7

“SANE SOCIALISM”

MINISTER’S EXPOSITION ATTACK ON “HOTCH-POTCH CAPITALISM” (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. “The Opposition asks what sort of Socialism we stand for,” said the Minister of .Labour, the on H. T. Armstrong, during . the Address-in-Reply debate in the House of Representatives yesterday. “We stand for sane Socialism, that’s all. What kind of hotchpotch capitalism does the Opposition stand for? The member for Stratford, for instance, has always wanted Socialism for the farmers and capitalism for everyone else.” Figures had been produced by Mr K. J. Holyoake, said the Minister, to show that people were eating and drinking less and wearing fewer clothes now than in the depths of the slump. Could anything more stupid emanate from the brain of man? he asked. The reason that more mutton was eaten in the slump was that it was given away to keep relief workers alive. Hundreds of thousands of carcases had been sent to the works to be boiled down for fat because there was no market for mutton overseas. The Year Book, from which Mr Holyoake had quoted, showed every carcase actually not shipped as having been consumed in New Zealand, no matter what happened to it. If it was dumped into the sea it would be recorded as being consumed in New Zealand. Mr Holyoake adjnitted that more milk was consumed now that during the slump. That was because the Government was supplying thousands of, children with milk where the last Government had not been able to supply them with water. More potatoes were eaten during the slump, but it should be remembered that at the time of the Irish famine, the worst period in Ireland’s history, more potatoes were consumed than ever before. The truth was that in New Zealand the people could not afford other things than potatoes.