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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 75

An Editor is a Jack of All Opinions

An Editor is a Jack of All Opinions,

and a master of none. So, therefore, one can forgive him, and I am only mentioning that I repudiate his representation of the case, as I very much regret his scurvy treatment. I want to say that I do not look upon the article as at all indicative of the mind of the New Zealanders in their welcome of myself. (Applause.) But I want to deal a little with that side of the case, because there is an amount of ignorance regarding it; and let me say in a very few words that for the tens of thousands of years the world has existed, long before the era of machinery, industries representing millions of persons were carried on without a capitalistic system. The system of coinage is a very new system indeed, and those of you who are Scotch or Irish, if page 16 you know anything of the history of your own country, will know that the Scotch crofter and the Irish farmer hardly ever saw such a thing as money, and yet lived to an old age. They lived without the printing press that made the money, but they had the produce and exchanged it for what they required in return; and only one-fifth part of the population of the world to-day carry on their industries with a system of coinage. In the Old Country, and throughout the world generally, most of the agriculturalists and peasantry class to-day produce all their own necessaries, and only exchange their products for paying their rents, &c., and very often sell to their own landlords the commodities they produce. The exchange of commodities is only