s and now rules the country, should
not blind us to the farmers' influence. The very terms of the graduated
land tax and the value of the farms chosen for exemption show
mathematically the influence, not alone of the small, but even the
middle-sized farmers. Estates of less than $25,000 in value are exempt,
and those valued at less than $50,000 are to be taxed less than one per
cent. Such farms, as a rule, must have one or more laborers. Will these
employees come in under the compulsory arbitration law? If they do, will
they get much benefit? The experience of New Zealand and the present
outlook in Australia do not lead us to expect that they will.

Many indications point to a coming realignment of parties such as was
recently seen in New Zealand, when in 1909 it was decided to form an
opposition Labour Party. And it is likely to come, as in New Zealand,
when the large estates are well broken up and the agricultural element
can govern or get all they want without the aid of the working people.
Already the Australian Labour Party is getting ready for the issue. Its
leaders have kept the proposed land nationalization in the background,
because they believe it cannot yet obtain a majority. But it may be that
the party itself is now ready to fight this issue out on a Socialist
basis, even if, like the Socialist parties in Europe, such a decision
promises to delay for a generation their control of the government. If
the party is ready, it has the machinery to bring its leaders to time,
as it has done on previous occasions. For it already resembles the
Socialist parties in Europe in this, that it makes all its candidates
responsible to the party and not to their constituents. That is to say,
while it does not represent the working people exclusively, it is a
class organization standing for the interests of that group of classes
which has joined its ranks, and for other classes of the community only
in so far as their interests happen to be the same.

Already the majority of the Labour Party voters are undoubtedly working
people. When it takes a definite position on the land question, favoring
one-family farms and short leases or else cooeperative, municipal, or
national large-scale operation, and states clearly that it intends to
use compulsory arbitration to advance wages indefinitely, including
those of farm laborers, there is every probability that, having lost the
support of the employing farmers, it will gradually take i