STATE SOCIALISM IN NEW ZEALAND.* Ws have learned to look
on New Zealand as" the sociological experiment station of the world," and, as the authors of this very impartial survey point oat, the conditions in New Zealand are extremely favourable, "the country is remote, with a small and homogeneous population ; the people are intelligent, well educated, and have a high standard of public virtue, the soil is fertile, the climate healthful. Surely here, if anywhere, the ideals of Utopia could be realized!' Utopia, has not been reached, but, on the other hand, the views of those who prophesied speedy bankruptcy for the Socialistic adventures of the Government have not been justified. " The Government has borrowed enormous sums, has. entered into competition with private capital, has carried on some enterprise at a loss, and has made great con- cessions to the working class," but, though admittedly much of such action is costly and impolitic, the country ie. prosperous and wealthy and can afford some extravagance. The philosophical economist, our authors suggest, might like to see the Socialistic experiment pushed on more rapidly, but this is by no means the view of the New Zealander. Whets their experiments have gone far enough, they are stopped, and at present we are assured that the pendulum is swinging back from municipal trading and State enterprise to an encourage- ment of private adventure. The landed class also has largely increased, and there are many owners of property, and a. civilization based on a wide distribution of private ownership does not feel the need of any common or Socialistic tenure of wealth. These conditions are beginning to make them- selves felt, and we come round to the old position, that though revolutionary and confiscatory legislation is• inevitable, not as a better alternative than violence, ulti- mately society must revert to old-fashioned principles of property.
A sinister influence is noted in the growth of the corrupt power of the State. Mr. Seddon "taught the people in every part of the colony to stand in with the Government if they wished to be remembered in the distribution of the loaves and fishes," and the practice of this precept kept Mr. Seddon and his party for long at the head of affairs.
"It may be thought," our authors remark, "that govern- ment by a bureaucracy is the same as government by the people," as the people elect the Ministers and the Ministers control the departments, but this is by no means the ease. "A department at first exists for the performance of some public service; but after a time it comes to exist for its own sake, and the service which it performs is quite a secondary matter."
There is in New Zealand no driving force of poverty and suffering to press the claims of a submerged class and to supply motives to sentimental politicians, and this fact differentiates its experiments from any that could be tried in European countries. New Zealand can inaugurate an experiment and can stop it when it seems convenient. Neither bankruptcy nor revolution is reached ; all that appears is the backward swing of the pendulum. We should not be justified in assuming that a momentum of this character, once created, could, under European conditions, be so easily controlled.
Stato Socialism in New Zccdand. By James Edward Le Bosaignol, Pro• fear-or of Economics in the University of Denver, and William Downie Stewart, Barrister-at-Law, Dunedin, Now Zealand. London: G. G. Harrais and Co. [is. net.]
Previous page
