THE DRINK QUESTION.

Feilding Star, Volume XVII, Issue 8, 9 July 1895, Page 2

THE DRINK QUESTION.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE STAR. Sir, —Your issue of the 4th insfc., contained a letter signed " Prohibitionist," in response to which I beg to be allowed a word. Your correspondent says that if the production of alcoholic liquors were prohibited capitalists would invest in the next beet thing which would at least return seven or eight shillings in the pound to the labourer for his work. I have no doubt they would inve3t inthe next best thing; and I have no doubt, also, when they found the worker content to do without his beer, and opportunity favoured them, they would have no hesitation in reducing his wages. A revenue must be realised. The working man is the Atlas who bears this enormous globe of indebtedness upon his shoulders, and in order to provide for special national emergencies his wages -would be reduced. Even if the production of alcoholic liquors was prohibited we have no guarantee that those millions spent in drink would be directed towards the benefit of the toiling masses. I believe they would find their way into the coffers of the privileged classes. The causes of commercial depression lie in the non-con-sumption of the incomes of our millionaires. The Rothchilds' family in Europe, for example, is estimated to be worth. £200.000,000 and their income to be £7,000,000. If they and their brother capitalists demanded these seven millions in merchandise there would be no commercial crisis, no want of work ; but they do not take their .£7,000,000 in goods, they want them in cash. To get this cash the workers have to sell the goods they have produced in order to pay the Rothschilds' interest. Who buys them ? The Rothschilds' are only bidders, say, up to two millions and have no more wants after that. The ■workers have wants enough, but they have to give up their money to the extent of seven millions to the Rothschilds, they consequently cannot buy goods "with them. In this way we find a deficit of five millions which become 5 l-stb, the next year the Rothschild investing anew the five millions and increasing their power to levy tribute on the workers. But, let us see how it is with the worker who saves. He puts his money in the bank and becomes a minnow among the whales of usury. His deposits yield him, we shall say, 3 per cent. Along to the bank comes his employer who wants to buy more efficient machinery. He borrows his hand's saving at 6 per cent and the new plant gives him a return of 12 per cent minus 6 per cent payable to the bank. Who is it that pays this 12 per cent ? Why the depositor, worker, and his fellows of comse. That this may be done the workers wages must be lowered 12 per cent or, what comes to the same thing, where the producer is the consumer 12 per cent must be added to the price of the goods manufactured. The robbery of the poor because they are poor is especially the mercantile form of theft. The ordinary highwayman's robbery of the rich being less profitable and more dangerous than that of the poor, is rarely practised by persons of discretion. Selfishness is our only science and as an industrial production selfishness is suicide. Competition which is the instinct of selfishness is another word for the dissipation of energy, while combination is the secret of efficient production and not till the idea of increasing the 'individual board gives place to the idea of increasing the common stock, can industrial combination be realised and the acquisition of wealth really begin. Even if the principle of share and share alike for all men were not the only humane and rational basis for a society) we should still enforce it as economically expedient seeing that until the disintegrating influence of self-seeking is sup* pressed no true concert of industry ia possible. But the world at large appreciates but slightly, or not at all, the. injustice perpetrated on the poor, because it has continued for so many centuries, because mankind has become accustomed to it by habit, and also because it has not yet assumed that paradoxical form in which truth must reveal itself before it can force an ea« trance into unreceptive minds. I am, &c, Patrick Toohey. Harbor Board Block, July Bth, 1895.