Windsor & Richmond Gazette, Saturday, February 24, 1900 - page 2 POLITICAL By The Lobbyist Trade union wages have been adopted by the Minister for Works as the Government rates, and whenever an opportunity offers for applying their principles in a rational way Mr. O'Sullivan does not fail to seize it. "Sully" is after the "wurrking" man's vote with a vengeance. It is quite evident that Mr. W. A. Holman, the eloquent young Labor member for Grenfell, is an aspirant for the leadership of the Parliamentary Labor Party, and one of the questions the party will have to decide before long is whether it shall lead Mr. Holman, or whether this ambitious young man shall lead it. Labor members Holman, Griffith and Neilson have got into hot water with their patriotic constituents because they committed the great crime of voting against the proposal to send a contingent of soldiers to South Africa. A big majority of hon. members would have voted in the same manner had a secret instead of an open vote been taken. Mr. G. H. Reid is a deadly opponent of our Early Closing Act. "It's a great blunder," he says, "and has been the means of ruining hundreds of small storekeepers to the gain of big houses. The big tradesman now sits at a table loaded with viands, and he will not spare even the crumbs for his poorer neighbours." The people of the United States pay more taxes than the people of any other nation on the globe. The estimated total of national and local taxation is £126,000,000. The total annual taxation of Great Britain is only £119,000 ; of France, £122,000,000 ; of Germany, £108,000,000 ; of Russia, £72,000,000 ; of Austria, £55,000,000 ; of Italy, £81,000,000. Mr. O'Sullivan, Minister for Works, has announced that while he would not coerce men into joining trade unions, he thought it would be advantageous for them to do so, as most of the concessions hitherto made to labor have been largely the outcome of trade unionism. He further said he would protect trade unionists from being interfered with, or from being unfairly treated, on account of their principles.