DEFENCE OF EMPLOYERS

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22507, 15 September 1938, Page 8

DEFENCE OF EMPLOYERS

“NO BETTER SYSTEM PROVED” ATTITUDE TO SOCIAL SERVICES ADDRESS BY MR W. MACHIN “Let us hold ourselves up to a mirror to see whether we have really earned the reputation, at which so many shafts of criticism are aimed, to see whether we bear the sinister aspect of big interests, and whether we are predatory and selfish,” said Mr W. Machin, in opening his address at the -annual meeting of the Employers’ Association of Canterbury, Westland, and Marlborough, last night. “I have heard it said that employers desired to cut wages and pensions and were responsible for the worst aspects of the depression.” he said. “The employers are part of a system, which has raised the standard of living to a height never before attained. The people flinging the shafts of criticism are assuming that a better system has arrived. No system which has been tested has been found to work better than our own. Socialism has not been tested. The 200 or so Socialist colonies which history records were broken up by the individual initiative of the more enterprising.

“We must definitely rebut the suggestion that in sinister fashion employers have been preventing the establishment of a better system. Efforts aiming at its introduction have been the attempts of force rather than reason. The community generally, with its own ultimate good sense of values, is in the last analysis the employer, which turns down those organisations and systems which do not give the best service.” Value of Profit Quoting from a pamphlet written by Mr J. A. Lee, Mr Machin referred to ■what some called the “stigma of profit.” Profit, he said, was the best test of efficiency, and that of a big concern, made up of many small profits of infinitesimal size on each unit of business. only represented the payment by the community for efficient service, it was true that employers had cut wages in the depression; but this was obviously necessary when the export income of the country had declined from £56,000,000 to £36,000,000. “The charge that employers cut wages is only half the truth." said Mr Machin. ‘'Before the present Government came into office wages were being restored ' spontaneously. “One thing stands out in the buttermarketing scheme in New Zealand,’ continued Mr Machin. “Of all the boasted and vaunted success of tha Government in business not one shilling has been added to the price ol butterfat. The yield returned to the dairy farmer is only what the London market has yielded. . This should be used and Hung back into the face of those who charge private enterprise with having failed.” . Social Services /The heart plj on social service was sound. hc.'|Spid. There was never any evidence to show‘ that her people would go back on wh»t progressively and continuously had been found for those who were in unfortunate circumstances. The statement tha’t the men who. had borne the main burden of cost for social services in the depression were opposed to them was false and unworthy of those in high places, who were responsible for it. "Britons,” he said, “are too hardheaded to do more than is prudent, to embrace untried schemes, and to cripple the .strong, on whom prosperity depends, for the sake of the weak.” - The critics of employers, Mr Machin continued, were endeavouring, to manufacture crimes for the purpose of obtaining an opportunity,. from the repercussions, of bringing in the new social order. Unfortunately the vast majority of these doctrinaire persons had never directly employed large numbers of men or handled large sums of money. 111-founded as the present schemes were, there was one thing that could be said in their favour: they had been put into effect constitutionally.

Finally, Mr Machin said, the criticism that they were powerless to protect the community from booms and slumps had been levelled at employers. “There is nothing that can be seen either in the policy or practice of the critics in power that will lead to such a mitigation,” he said. “The most severe criticism that can be brought against our critics is that New Zealand Government stock issued last year has dropped 5J per cent, in value. What we would like is some evidence that the wealth of this community has increased over the last , three years, and not merely been transferred from one class of persons to another.”