OTHER PEOPLE’S IDEAS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 31 August 1939, Page 3

OTHER PEOPLE’S IDEAS

POLITICS & THE WORKERS (To the Editor.) Sir,—Before the Labour Party came into power it used to cry out about the Tory Government favouring the . big man and the capitalist too much, and made a great boast of what it would do to these people. One of the first things the 1 Labour Party promised the people of New Zealand it would do when it got into power was to crush the capitalists, so that the money man would be as scarce as the moa. It said that it would crush the syndicates, combines, trusts and capitalistic firms. Now, what do we find? The place is alive with chain stores and others—more now than ever before;. The Labour Party said it was its intention to oust all these trusts and to enable the small business man to exist, but who are closing their business doors today. Certainly not the chain stores or syndicates. In spite of what our Government has had to say about the capitalist, we find that as soon as the country finds itself in the financial mess that we are in today our Mr. Nash flics post haste to London. What for? To hob-nob with the capitalist at Home. He finds out after all that he cannot do without the money man.

There is also another important matter I wish to draw the working mans attention to. I refer to the Post Office, where we have a Labour member Postmaster-General. If a working man writes a letter to a working friend and puts a penny stamp on it, but forgets to seal it, then his friend at the other end has to pay 2d penalty. Again, if he writes a letter to his friend and that friend cannot be found and the letter is returned through the Dead Letter Office, then again the writer is penalised for 2d. Now all this has come about since the Labour Government came into office. So it will be seen, apart from many other taxes and penalties imposed on the working man since the Labour Government came into power, that the present Government is not the friend to the workers and the small business men that it professed to be. These little things that I have mentioned and they are only a few. have come about by the working man’s friend, the Government, but were never thought of by the previous Government. I well remember the cry the Labour Party put up when the late Reform Government gave the large landowner a subsidy of I believe, not more than 33 1-3 per cent, for improvements, such as scrubcutting, etc. Yes, there was a big howl over that. Yet it was only recently that the Labour Government gave the same big squatters up to 75 per cent, subsidy for the same work that it had previously condemned. Thanking you for the space.—l am, etc., SMALL BUSINESSMAN. Masterton, August 30. Our correspondent is in error in his statements regarding penalties on letters posted unsealed, or returned through the Dead Letter Office. On inquiry at the Post Office it was learned that no such penalties are imposed. —Ed.