"Business-like" Labour.

Press, Volume LVII, Issue 17125, 21 April 1921, Page 6

"Business-like" Labour.

Some of the Labour candidates for seats on the City Council are 'stressing the ability of Labour to manage the city's affairs on business-like line 3. One would feel more assurance of the accuracy of their contention if representative Labourites did not, from time to time, give expression to weird views on business matters. An instance of the kind of thing to which we refer occurred during the sitting of the recent coal conference in Wellington. It had been pointed out by the owners that among the charges borne by coal was interest on the capital expended in developing the mine, and depreciation. 3lr O'Brien, the North Island representative of the Miners' Federation, thereupon asserted that interest and depreciation were not proper charges at all, and he did not see why the owners should be allowed to make them. "All that they were entitled " to waj what the miner got—three " meals and a bed." Passing over the obvious retort to this curious remark, that if that was all the miner got ho made extremely poor use of very good wages, Mr Reecc pointed out that the money spent on the development of n mine was often borrowed, and interest had to be paid by the borrower. Mr O'Brien, he added, seemed to think it was a crime that capital invested by the State, or anyone else, should bear interest. "I would make it a crime," replied the miners' representative, adding that ordinary individuals could borrow money among themselves without paying interest. "I can go to a "mate," he said, "and get five shillings without paying interest." It must have been with the utterance of this incredibly fatuous remark that the mine-owners recognised the futility of trying to negotiate with a body of men whose delegate talked such nonsense. Some people see danger in the efforts of the W.E.A. to instil some knowledge of economics into the minds of the workers, but this remark showed how vitally necessary such knowledge is to the workers' leaders. 3>oe3 Mr O'Brien know no fellow-workers who have put their savings into the Post Office Savings Bank, or into some money club? And if he does, does he believe that they should refuse to accept the interest that the Government pays on their deposits in the bank, or the dividend that tho money club declares out of the interest received for loans: Does he know none of the thousands of workers in New Zealand who, by the exercise of thrift, have saved money, bought a cottage or two, and benefit, perhaps when their working days are over, by the rents they receive, these rents being merely interest on their capital. Mr O'Brien's credit is, no doubt, good enough for a loan of 5s without interest, but would he expect a mate to lend him £25 or £SO on equally generous terms? Would he him'selT lend a similar amount without expecting the borrower to pay him interest for it? If ho did, would he not feel that he was presenting his friend with something, viz., accommodation; of a mercantile value, as real as the value of coal, or of the service of lifting it? If he would not, and if the abolition of interest is involved in the social theory of organised Labour in this country, as we believe it is, wo shall know what to expect if Labour ever secures the reins of office.