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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 76

Mr. George Fowlds (Auckland City)

Mr. George Fowlds (Auckland City).

This gentleman's ridiculous comparison between a house lift and a railway reminds me of his silly assertion that the single tax tenure is a freehold. There is just as much resemblance between the one thing as the other. He goes on to say, "He hoped that in deciding on the question of giving this system a trial the House and country would not be guided by any facts or figures put forward by Mr. Vaile, because he (Mr. Fowlds) had been compelled to test his figures and statements, and he had never found anyone who could so exaggerate and so misstate facts." He then quotes my statement that our railways last year did not earn their working expenses by £280,266, and goes on to say, "Still, of course, no sane man would accept those figures or believe there was any reliability about them ....... His (Mr. Vaile's) statements were not to be taken as in any sense reliable. During many years he had investigated many statements made by page 15 Mr. Vaile, and he had never found his figures accurate or his statements correct."

It is difficult to imagine a man in the position of a member of Parliament descending so low as to speak thus of another man's work, without making the least attempt to prove the truth of his assertions. He says that for years he has examined my figures and had "never" found them "accurate."

Others, and far more competent, more widely known, and esteemed men than Mr. George Fowlds, have examined my figures and have publicly certified to their accuracy. Among them the first I remember is the late Mr. Whitaker, who formerly represented Waikato. He stated that he had examined my figures and found them "substantially correct." (I have made it a rule to avoid fractions as much as possible.) Then Mr. A. C. Fife, Accountant to the Railway Department, prepared a table which absolutely proves the correctness of all my more important figures and calculations. One of the best known mathematicians in the whole world, Professor Steadman Aldis, kindly checked over some very important figures of mine, which had been called in question, and in writing certified to their correctness; so did Captain W. C. Daldy; also a Committee of the Auckland Chamber of Commerce; also well-known professional accountants like Messrs. J. A. Connell, John Milne, and C. A. Jonas. With evidence like this against him, for Mr. George Fowlds to say that my figures are "never'' correct, savours of something like insolence.

If Mr. Fowlds has made this grand discovery, is it not his duty to expose my error? Does not the country pay him to watch over its interests? I do not ask him for any mercy. I do not claim to be perfect, and it would be strange indeed, if in the vast cloud of figures I have placed before the public during the last twenty years, there were not some errors. But the fact remains that they have never been pointed out, although I have been keenly and closely watched.

I, too, have had occasion to examine some of Mr. Fowlds' figures and statements, and here are some of the results. In England Mr. Fowlds published a letter in which he stated without any qualification whatever, that the increase in the N.Z. Public Debt by £5,108,778 during the then four years of the Seddon adminstration had decreased the burdens of the people, because, he said. "The increase of debt has gone entirely in three directions—the conversion of previous loans at a premium to secure a lower rate of interest, the building of railways, and lending out money to farmers at a much lower rate of interest than they had previously been paying." Now, during this period, the total amount spent in building railways and in loans to settlers was £1,881,223. Consequently, Mr. Fowlds says that during this four years we spent £63,227,555 in converting loans, when the total capital value of the loans converted was considerably under £3,000,000. When this preposterous blunder was brought home page 16 to him, he had not the manliness to confess his error; but this could hardly be expected of a man who a few days previously had written thus of himself: "Now, if there is one thing on which I pride myself more than any other, it is the exactness of the facts and figures used by me in any public utterance." In one of his single tax contentions I also proved him to be £29,000,000 out in his statement of values. Mr. F. G. Ewington also has more than once shown Mr. Fowlds to be wildly astray in his figures. No Auckland man would trust them, excepting always the single taxers, who seem prepared to swallow anything their leaders say.