SOCIALISM IN NEW ZEALAND.
[To THE EDITOR or THE " SPECTATOR."] SIE,—I have received a letter from a correspondent in New Zealand which may interest those of your readers who wish to observe the development and the results of Socialism. I give the sentences verbatim :— " I was sorry to see that the Socialist candidate had been returned for Derbyshire by the help of the Liberal Ministry. The Socialist Question is becoming acute here, and (as I fear is the case at home) the Government is afraid of them. There is a certain amount of real distress this winter, and I think the Labour - Unions are partly the cause of it. They have fixed. the rate of wages so high that the farmers cannot employ as many men as they need-to; and also the Unions prosecute a man who gives lees than the fixed rate to an unskilled, inoompetent man Many an old or weakly man would be glad to earn five or six shillings a day doing odd jobs, but if he did so he or his employer would be liable to prosecution by these tyrannical Unions. So he gets no work at all, and goes to swell the ranks of the unemployed.'
Here is the true development of Socialism. Every man is to have the same wage, fit or unfit, skilled or unskilled, worthy or unworthy. Is this to be the next step here ? Wby not ? It is no more stupid, no more ruinous economically, than some steps already taken by the Commons ; and if their allies in New Zealand have carried it there, why should not the Labour Party clamour for it here P The Ministers, we know, will have nothing to do but to obey. Let the con- stituencies ponder these things, and let it be further remem- bered that this blundering tyranny was enacted in New Zealand under the exercise of female suffrage.—I am,
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