MONEY SYSTEM

Wairarapa Times-Age, 11 March 1939, Page 9

MONEY SYSTEM

WHAT DOES THE GOVERNMENT PROPOSE? MR HAMILTON STILL WAITING FOR REPLY. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) ’ WELLINGTON, This Day. “My plain question remains unanswered: ‘What are the details of the recent announcement by Mr Savage that he is about to change the money system?’ Is the Prime Minister so involved with the financial embarrassment his top-heavy schemes and past extravagances have brought upon him? Or is it that, having made his timeworn false comparison between the depression and recent years of great prosperity, he hopes he has evaded the issue? In any case, I refuse to be confused by his evasion.” This statement was made by the Leader of the National Party, Mr Hamilton, yesterday on his return to Wellington after completing a tour of the Wairarapa, Manawatu and Hawke’s Bay districts. Mr Hamilton observed that Mr Savage and those of his colleagues who were bent on “changing the money system” had begun, in the style of all revolutionaries, by setting up objects for the people’s hatred certain imaginary figures stigmatised as “money bugs” and “dividend kings. Who were these awful people? Where did they live? “Mr Savage never condescends to say who he is aiming at,” Mr Hamilton added, “because he well knows that the ‘money bugs’ in a country like this Dominion are the Post Office depositors, the holders of life and industrial insurance policies, friendly society members and other similar groups of people whose aggregate of small savings is invested in our primary and secondary production. ... “It is well to remember that the people who receive dividends are the thousands of company shareholders whose savings are invested in various industrial enterprises. Many of these shareholders started to ‘build a nation, and made a good commencement, too, long before Mr Semple and Mr Savage ever thought of coming to New Zealand to give them a hand.”