THE CAUSE OF ECONOMIC. TROUBLES

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 305, 20 September 1919, Page 7

THE CAUSE OF ECONOMIC. TROUBLES

Sir—l read with' much interest in your issue of last Saturday Sir John Findlay's speech in the Houso of Representatives on the cause of economic troubles. Briefly,, he advocated that. our sovereign should bo standardised, and that a commission of experts should be appointed in New Zealand to investigate this most important matter. There can be no doubt in. the mind of any thinking person that the increase in living expenses without a corresponding increase in compensation for work, has caused .a. falling off in consumption among tlioso of ns who live by our own work. Trace this disparity to its source, and you find the ca-use lodged in monopolistic | forms of property. Analyse, and you discover that the disparity is due to an economic conflict between monopolistic interests and working interests, in which the working interests have got the.worst of it. (.letting the worst uf it, their demand for consumption declines. As tho effect of this reacts upon production tho demand lor workers declines, which pro-, duces a- further decline in demand for consumption, and that again in demand I'nr production, and so on. . Without a radical change of economic policy, the aliernibliims of industrial vhills and lovers will continue. The most perfect currency system cannot slop them, tho best administration of national "Hairs cannot' avert them. They nro symptoms of industrial disease, aud so long as we leave the disease in the social system we shall have to endure the alternating symptoms—we and our children and our children's children to the last generation. For there is natural law in the social world, ami natural law cannot bo defied. By natural law Ihe product of work belongs to the workers, each in

proportion to his work. If we make this principle tho basin of our social system, wo sliould have uo fever of monopotistio speculation, for there would bo no monopolies, and we should have no chill of industrial depression, for there could be no industrial depression when work was freed from tho depredations of monopoly. But we cannot make that principlo the basis of our social system without disturbing valuable vested rights in tho profits .••f social disease. In a word, we'must abolifilTiiionopoly of the earth and restraints upon trade, which cannot bo done without pain to all those ■who eat their bread in the sweat of other men's faces. But let it be done and tho demand of workers for work (idlers, whether rich or poor, arc outside the pale of: consideration) will so constantly meet the supply, that industrial depression will trouble us no longer.—l am, StC " JNO; W. HTJSSEY. Smithfield, Wauganui,