The Wairarapa Daily TUESDAY, AUGUST 11, 1891.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XII, Issue 3882, 11 August 1891, Page 2

The Wairarapa Daily TUESDAY, AUGUST 11, 1891.

Ministers are using their big majority to force through their new taxation and labour bills. Trade experts throughout the Colony say that these measures will be injurious to the community, but politicians declare that they will benefit the working man and the small land holder. If, however, the community suffers, which members of it will be the ones to come to grief ? There can be but one answer, and that indicates as the victims the very men who are supposed to be benefitted. The well-to-do men of Mew Zealand can Btand the changes that are being brought about, or if they do not choose to put up with them they can sell out and move to another colony or country. It is simply the weakest that will go to the nail, the small shopkeeper,the little farmer, and the man dependent on wages, who is living from hand to mouth. The changes now being made mean, so say impartial and competent experts, a restriction of trade, and a diminution of production, a few hundred thousand pounds less spent annually in wages, a few hundred thousand pounds less distributed amongst shopkeepers and tradesmen. The blow will fall, not on the man whose back is broad enough to stand it, but on the man of straw or the straggler, who now has perhaps just sufficient means to keep his head above water. The Ministers are forced to carry their measures whether they believe in them or no, because the labour party insists upon their passage. We venture to predict that the first to cry out when the changes brought about by the new legislation begin to take effect will be the working men. Unless some windfall occurs such as the discovery of a rich goldfield we may expect that within twelve months the unemployed in New Zealand will be far more numerous than they are new, and there will be an absolute fall, in wages. Acts of Parliament can alter the conditions of the labourer, but outside the Government service they cannot raise his wages. This will come home to the workers in due course.and when it does, there will be a demand for the repeal of the mischievous legislation which is now being concocted. Before two years are over we shall see the big shop* keeper eating up the little shopkeeper, tLe big landholder buying up the little landholder, the strong workman driving to the wall the weak workman. This is the inevitable result of political changes, made in the teeth of common sense by men who in many instances have in their own careers been failures, by men who have never been able to make both ends meet in their own private enterprises, and who yet unhesitatingly undertake to re-arrange the business of the whole colony on new and untried ~ M have been demonstrated m £ ™"™« .."** untrustworthy by to be unwise auv* . . •*.. * almost every business mau colony. I