Page:The empire and the century.djvu/508

 Bad land laws, too, leading to monopoly, have been obstructive in the past, and have left a legacy of evil. And the fall of prices of raw products, felt so severely between 1820 and 1895, embarrassed New Zealand as it embarrassed other young countries. Moreover, the New Zealander's ambition for progress, above referred to, must be taken with one important qualification. The march must not be of Progress and Poverty. The growth of population must not be any ugly rush that will lower the standard of comfort. The New Zealander is a worker—a hard and intelligent worker; but, whatever his class, he expects a liberal return for his labour. His ideal is the golden mean: a land without material misery, where there shall be something for everyone and not too much for anybody; a land where life shall not be a lottery with a few great prizes and a vast number of blanks. Hence the exclusion laws, which almost bar out Asiatics. Hence the land laws, which aim at preventing any but small or middling farmers from acquiring agricultural land from the Crown; the progressive land tax, the absentee tax, and the rates levied on unimproved values. Hence the Industrial Arbitration Act and a whole code of labour laws stipulating for fair working conditions not only in factories, workshops, and mines, but in open-air industries. Hence the statutory encouragement given to the formation not only of trade unions, but of associations of masters, with the levelling influence which such associations have. Hence the deliberate throwing of old-age pensions for the aged poor, and the whole burden of charity (outdoor relief, hospitals, lunatic asylums) upon the public in almost complete indifference to its effect upon private alms-giving. Hence the construction and management of railways, telegraphs, and telephones by the State, with the immense reduction which this implies of the field of enterprise left open to the capitalists. The New Zealander is not such a materialist as to fancy that a decent share of comfort all round—to be earned by hard work—will insure human 30