THE OUTLOOK.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 20101, 3 December 1930, Page 15

THE OUTLOOK.

,D ' TO,, °* THE pbbss * e shall h# * n the near future tia VB Mrts of remedies from flse political Parties, each with the erti i nos * rUm guaranteed to 4 Utt]» a ° me ' Each remedy **** WiUt. 18°o<3 sense coated with - n ffur th* utUL Bid g«

conference or board or meetings of men will ever solve tho question unless and until they got down to basic facts, and the underlying axiom of all living facts is this, that "By the sweat of our brows must we eat our bread, and until we sweat we can't eat."

When we realise this, then we shall begin to perceive the next basic fact, and that is that by giving high wages we are curtailing work, and when we lessen work, we are keeping some of our citizens from earning their bread. If an employer can spend &CO on certain work—as wages—surely it is better that SO men should do that work at 15s per day, than that 66 men at 18s, because the 80 men use 80 pairs of boot 3 and eat 240 meals daily, and wear 80 suits of clothes; which food, boots, and clothes have all to bo made by other workmen. Thus 20 per cent, more work is occasioned by paying the smaller wage to the greater number than if the few got the higher wage. Surely that is clear. At tho bottom of all our trouble is this fixing of wages. Ever since the Arbitration Court started in this country wages have consistently risen. If a temporary slump occurred more money was borrowed from London to tide us over the rainy day and the worker, whether shop hand or mechanic, was able to keep his job owing to the false impetus the spending of such torrowed money made to trade. Now, however, wo are up against a real financial depression. All our export values are down, our imports reduced, though they are still too high to balance with the reduced value of our exports. Tho small internal trade that wo have is insufficient to provide all of our workers with a living wage at the rate which an artificial Court has fixed as the reward. So we have this position. Part of our working army is kept out of employment so that the remainder can be employed at high rates. If the total work in New Zealand was distributed among all the available workers and the same total of money apportioned equitably among the employees, a greater number would benefit, and living costs would come down. Take the farmer. Of late he has been hit from all sides, but most of all by heavy taxation. Consequently his producing power has been seriously curtailed. This is killing tho goose with the golden eggs with a vengeance. If farming had been encouraged by easing taxation, more men would have been employed, and the result would have been more production and more clothes and boots wanted to keep tho farmer clothed.

The artificial fixing of wages is quite wrong. It is an interference with natural law. No Court of Conciliation or Arbitration can make work whore thero is none. Men in New Zealand are being put off work daily, because the award wage is so high that employers cannot pay it. When wages come down, as they must very shortly, then the cost of living will automatically drop, and then less will bo heard of unemployment.

I am not a professor of economics but a plain citizen. I have lived here over 50 years and have seen Christchurch grow from a small town to the beautiful City it is to-day. It was made beautiful by hard work, not by mass meetings of Socialists. I remember that during harvest —labour was scarcer then and better —the Town Council used to send its men into the country to help the farmer harvest his crops. That was the spirit. If we could have more of that spirit now there would bo less strife and bitterness. —Yours, etc., B. December 2nd, 1930.