The Hokitika Guardian WEDNESDAY, FEB. 21st. 1923. THE TALE OF A WAISTCOAT.

Hokitika Guardian, 21 February 1923, Page 2

The Hokitika Guardian WEDNESDAY, FEB. 21st. 1923. THE TALE OF A WAISTCOAT.

Thu Labour Party in their extreme socialism make frequent references to their avowed policy of a levy on capital. it is their great panacea to cure the economic evils of Slate finance and eo relieve the burden of a national debt. The subject came to the fore very prominently in the late British elections, and a. good deal was heaid from the hustings. The London Daily Mail dealt with the subject in lighter vein. It proceeded:—Whenever we examine the Labour Party's clamour for a capital levy we are tempted to recall the non classic story uf Mr Arthur Henderson’s waistcoat, to which wo have previously made illusion. After the Russian Revolution had began Mi Henderson was sent to Petrogrud as 'Ambassador. Extraoidinnry. an honour from which he lias never quite reeovered. He arrived in the Russian capital with an outfit entirely appropriate for his exalted mission. Before Mr Henderson had been very long in Petrograd a Bolshevist twho had extremely orthodox views about the capital levy entered his room ai an hotel and stole his waistcoat. Theoretically the Bolshevist was quite in order in taking this intimate garment. Tile advocates of a. capital levy had explained that if people had not got much money in the hank their capital lies in their house, their furniture. their clothes, their pictures, their hooks, and the jewellery of their wives. When the Bolshevists made their capital levy in Russia they carried out this theory with ruthless oxaetiude, for they even seized the wedding rings of the Russian women. The plain gold rings were the capital of the women, and represented their all. But the Bolshevist who took Mr Henderson's waistcoat was most carefully carrying out Mr Henderson’s own views. In a speech lie has just made Mr Henderson says the capital levy will If‘fall lightly” on “snifill fortunes above a minimum of £5,000.” Such was the idea of the Petrograd Bolshevist, who did not want to bo too ruthless in his first cut at Air Henderson’s wardrobe. Afr Henderson had an overcoat of ample dimensions and weight, and according to some versions it was trimmed with fur. He also possessed a morning coat of the correct Ambassadorial cut. The Bolshevist gentleman wanted his requisitions to “fall .lightly.” He merely annexed the waistcoat, but when persons who preach the doctrine of “What’s yours is mine” once starts carrying their theories into practice they never know when to stop. Tf Air Henderson had stayed in I’otrograd a few weeks longer the Bolshevists would have stripped him of his shirt! We pass over the phase of Air Henderson's explosive wrath when he found that somebody had been helping himself to lysj wardrobe, but the story illustrates the theory of the capital levy far more clearly than many pages of statistics. Capital rarely < xists in cash. If a iiinii is reported to he worth many thousands of pounds he does not keep his liionev in a. box. If he is a Lancashire man his money may be in cotton mills. But supposing tlm Government tried to sell half the ret ion mills in Oldham in pursuance of a capital levy, what sort of a price would they get? Britain cannot he saved by seizing the people's possessions. Its salvation must lie in hard work and austere economy, but the Labour Socialist Party prefers to preach thy go>pel of more wages for less toil, which it knows to lie impossible until the world recovers stability.