Hokitika Guardian & Evening Star TUESDAY. SEPTERMBER 1O, 1918. RECONSTRUCTION AND FINANCE.

Hokitika Guardian, 10 September 1918, Page 2

Hokitika Guardian & Evening Star TUESDAY. SEPTERMBER 10, 1918. RECONSTRUCTION AND FINANCE.

Tumn; aj'o a great many discussions in the late monthly magazine on the present- financial conditions of the belligerents, on the industrial prospects rater tht> war and on the future relations of capital and labour. “Politicus," in I tip. “Fortnightly” discusses the wealth of Germany in coal and iron, mainly with a view to showing that if the mines were handed over to the Allies, Germany could pay an indemnity. He gives the very interesting history of the progress of these industries from the day on which a British committee reported that Germany could never make much use of her iron mines owing to tile distance between them and her coal deposits. Cheap water transport has done much, but improved method of extraction have done more, and in this writer's opinion both men have been supported bv a. policy which encourages the nation to be self sufficient or almost selfsufficient, and to retain its manufactures. Sir Hugh Bell, in the “Contemporary, ’’ sets out tlie difficulties which manufacturers will find in resuming industry when the war is over. , The railways will be out of repair; the companies will be short of 'capital; extensions have been neglected or abandoned ; artisans have lost their habits of regular work ; expedients have come jnto general use, which serve to produce articles in great haste, but are wasteful if persisted in. Sir Hugh Bell deals rather severely with the proposal for levy on capital. His remedy is the old one—nil increase of production. “Put it ns you like, this country has in four years or thereabouts dissipated wealth to the turn of many thousand millions. No levy on capital or oilier devise will do more than hide the facts. AVe had better boldly face the difficulty, make, up our minds to face the facts, and, hv thrift, industry and zeal raise our income so as to regain our former state of well-being as soon as possible.’’ Air Leonard Bell, in the same magazine, deals with the Balfour of Burleigh report. and strong disagrees with itHe thinks that the imposition of protective or preference duties is only a feeble way out of the difficulties which will he found after the war. He quotes the old saving that Britain’s industrial supremacy can he assured by the multiplication of toclinicnl schools and by that almost alone. He would qualify it: not by admitting the importance of a tariff hut by a reference to the relations between capital and labour to the provision of cheap and efficient .electric power, and better means of transport. Air Morgan in the “Fortnightly,’’ has a most, interesting discussion on the importance of fertilisers in the production of crops of all kinds, and Air Kennedy writes on the Overseas Trade Department, which lias been established (o collect and classify commercial information and to distribute it through commercial agents for the use of our traders. All those articles are indicative of the wide range of subjects which affect our prosperity pro and con. It is well that it is so. If our national prosperity were centred along a. single groove the ease might he hopeless, because opinion is so widely divergent as to the real panacea to save the national exchequer from final depletion There are, really, so many, and varied conditions affecting the nation'al welfare, that shortcomings in respect oven in a general way can be made up by the aggregate success of the whole. The post-war position will he real and complex for n very long time to come. The situation grows more and more difficult to unravel as time goes on. No simple rule propounded in advance can meet the ease adequately, for everything is going to he entirely different when the war ceases. The fnndamen-

tal premises will he to secure the unity and concord of capital and labour, whereby increased product ion can result. The buffo debt which will pall the world will bo an enormous load to carry. The waste of millions which has cone on at a reckless nace to preserve the national well-being must- in the end. be made good. 'through the channels of legitimate trading. This task will make biff demands upon statesmanship, and greater calls on the good sense of io"h and every section of the community. State control, it is conceivable might

hnoomr- .. -treatcv reality h.v force of circumstances which the new industrialism will create. There will bo room and the need for the expansion of sane socialism, and its length and breadth will be guagenble only by the common sense of the people as a whole. The upheaval of peace will start a new war which will have a wide commercial range full of deep perplexities.