SECOND EDITION Wairarapa Daily Times. [Established 1874.] SATURDAY, SEPT. 22, 1894. A LIBERAL FALLACY.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XV, Issue 4832, 22 September 1894, Page 2

SECOND EDITION Wairarapa Daily Times. [Established 1874.] SATURDAY, SEPT. 22, 1894. A LIBERAL FALLACY.

Thuiib is amongst our Liberal friends an unreasoning prejudice against the accumulation of wealth, and a settler who Ims made money is regarded ns the foo of the working man. Tot such a settler must necessarily be the friend and benefactor of the toiler in a community like this, and if our Liberal friends would allow their reason to take the place of their prejudice, they could not avoid coming to this conclusion. Now, suppose we take the example of a settler who has accumulated ten thousand | pounds, either through land or by trade. Such a settler is not very wealthy, but he possesses enough to mako him an object of envy to his fellow men, aud to render him for this reason somewhat unpopular in the community,' At any rate, in this district, no' mau with ten thousand pounds'woitld bo accepted as a true Liberal! If, however, tho fortunes of a man who has secured such a capital be followed up from thobeginning, it will, we think, be found that he did not come into possession of his fortune at once, but gradually acquired it by industrial, pastoral or agricultural enterprise, spread over a series of years. In order to accumu-j late ten thousand pounds he had to spend during the process of aggregation at least onehundredthousand pounds, and this hundred thousand pounds whether lio had been engaged in trade or had improved land, had in the main been expended on 1 labour. But even assuming that; only one half of the hundred thousand pounds which had yielded the, ton thousand pounds increase, had been spent in labour and this most intelligent persons will recognise to be a considerable uiider-estimate, it would follow that a man who had made ten thousand pounds hadspent fifty thousand pounds in labour; A Liberal when he sees a man with twenty thousand pounds walking down tlio etreot can say truthfully of Jiim "thatman has spent' it' hundred, thousand pounds 011 labour," and yet ho docs not realise that such a man is tho best benefactor that the workjngman can liavo. Evenassumiiig that the mail who makes money is hard and selfish—although sometimes bo is called this simply because, lie is firm and just—he is the' most, yaltiablo maiuln tlio cpipunity, because' he.cannijj make, money for himself withoutJnakingten times us much

money for others. Sncli men aro f necessity for a prosperous community and to select thorn as objects of special taxation and abuse means simply killing the goose that lays the golden egg for the working man. The truth that needs to be. brought home to the Liberals is that a 'man in this country cannot make a thousand pounds for himself without spending ten thousand on others, and that it is the height of folly to try and stop the expenditure of the ton tliousand in order to prevent the one thousand being accumulated..