NATIONALISATION OF INDUSTRIES.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 3762, 11 April 1907, Page 2

NATIONALISATION OF INDUSTRIES.

Several times a year like a bolt from the blue comes an order from the Amalgamated Societ} r of Glassblowers or the Industrial Union of Apple-peelers or some other great bodv, that Parliament shall do something or other to upset the order of our lives. A Uabour Parliament has been sitting in the South lately among its orders to the Government was one insisting that the State should set up a bootfactory so that the poor downtrodden worker should get his boots at a cheaper rate. We agree to buy cheaper boots when they arrive, but we don’t anticipate any particular joy in seeing the State at the last. It is noticeable that the persons who desire the State to s’et up bootfactories are not bootmakers, that the people who want the Government to establish bakeries are not bakers and the folks who desire the powers that be to undertake meat butchery are not butchers. Parliaments of Uabour and kindred organisations believe they are working for the benefit of the people —but as a matter of fact they really work for the benefit of Parliaments of labour. If it is the correct thing for the Government to make boots it is the correct thing for the Government to make clothes which are comparatively dearer and a larger tax on the poor suffering working man who really dosen’t suffer half as mtich as the sounds he makes would lead one to believe. But it is neither the correct thing for the Government to make clothes nor boots nor bread nor anything which would necessitate the overthrow of private enterprise, providing that such a private enterprise is being run legitimately, paying its way lawfully and giving the private enterpriser a due and just return for his expenditure of time, talent and initiative. It is obvious that the Labour end of this colony’s advisers has for its aim the ultimute owning of all industries by the State and it is a rather remarkable fact that when the Government does enter into any private business it does so, not with any surplus cash it ought to have by reason of its successful operations in the past, but with cash borrowed at a goodly rate of interest from the other side of the world. The private enterpriser who has initiative enough to start a bakery or butchery or other kind of business may start it with money earned by himself. Often enough, however, he borrows it and the person from whom he borrows it has a reasonable chance of getting his money plus interest, back again, especially if the borrower is a good business-man who intends to take every legitimate means to increase his business for his own gain and to wipe off the debt he contracted to begin the said business. The Government when it begins business in any competitive industry brrrows money to do it. It does not seek to pay the money back out of profits made by the industry, for as a rule there are very small profits. The Government does not run an industry economically and while its sale of any specific goods may cheapen those goods to the people who buy them, the result of Government business enterprise has always been to increase the taxation of the people who buy cheaper coal or insurance and pay dearer taxes. Or the colony which is in debt to the tune of sixty millions of pounds has no right to-borrow money to give Labour boots at twenty per cent less price and add a per centage to the indebtedness of the whole colony. By the wav, who, in the opinion of the reader, is going to repay the half a million pounds expended in the initiation of the State Coal Mines ? It is an excellent thing to have cheaper coal, of course, but of what profit is it to have five shillings docked from the price of a ton of coals when six shillings are added to the buyer’s indebtedness in other directions. The coming of State enterprise in manufactures would mean the death of private ambition, because if the State, having made up its mind, decided to kill private enterprise it could do so and ring the death-knell of any other business than State business. The worker in his blindness is willing to have the private trader destroyed, and while he urges his destruction he also urges that he be forced to give higher wages. To put it plainly, he wants no other class than workers —that is producers. He wants the State to pay the workers. He wants the State to sell hint the necessities of life gt a cheaper rate than he now gets them. To do this the Qoy§rumeuf must borrow money. If it follows its

usual course it neither pays the money back within thirty or forty years, nor keeps sinking funds, created for its repayment intact. The worker therefore desires to cheapen the goods he himself gets at the expense of posterity. His grandchildren at the rate of repayment common in New Zealand will pay for his present-day boots. The Nationalisation of all industries if possible would reduce the output and the skill of workers to a minimum, because there would be no necessity for any one to excel. There is little necessary, as it is, i for tradesmen to excel on account of the minimum wage and under the benign influence of Nationalisation loafers, would be commoner than flax bushes. The workers’ paradise is the country where the best worker gets the best price and is not called upon to help keep the loafer. Increase of natural industries means increase of National debt. It would naturally mean the withdrawal of private capital which is so scorned of the worker —in theory only. The country is largel}' dependant at this moment on borrowed capital. Under nationalisation of industries, supposing the State ran its new industries as it runs its already estab- 4 lished ones, it would be wholly dependant on boi rowed capital, but not for long. The lender requires his money sometimes or other and with the waning of private enterprise necessarily following Government interference, he would come for it in a hurry. If the the workers of New Zealand were suggesting the Nationalisation of industries with the State’s own cash there would be some reason for their plans, but they merely suggest the running into debt for the sake of momentary cheapness. It may be a class of statesmanship to buy at a cheap price todajr what the people of the future will have to buy over again and the gratitude of our successors who have to ‘‘workout a dead horse ’ ’ will assuredly be touching. The worker at his Parliament the other day called for the revisal of the tariff with the object of still further increasing the impost on goods made outside the colony in order to give the goods made within a chance. If industries are to be nationalised, why worry to protect the private manufacturer in New Zealand ? He is to be wiped out under nationalisation, is he not? The Workers’ Parliament proves the manufacturer to be a bad man who grinds the faces of the poor. It proves that the New Zealand manufacturer is a good man who ought to be protected. It proves that he shall be protected because he is going to be wiped out. It proves that the way to satisfy the sole of the worker is to give him State made boots at a cheap price, the making of which shall largely increase the State’s debt, which means his own debt. It proves that the Arbitration Act which has increased wages is a bad Act because it has stopped increasing wages. It proves that cost of living has largely increased and suggests as a remedy nationalisation of industries, which will reduce the cost of living to the present worker and make the future worker work overtime to pay his forefather’s debts. It proves that there has been a large increase in the profits of business, and that the worker’s share is too small, and suggests as a remedy the destruction of the industries which have made the large profits, in order that the State may take over the industries, run them itself and make much less profit and pay more wages. The Workers’ Parliament is an economic fog. It sees a way out of it’s alleged difficulties by adding to the country’s indebtedness and removing by surgical operation the brain from the body politic. It tells the colony how to run its industries, but does not run them itself. It would destroy the industries just by way of Commercial advancement, It would work if work paid better than talk. But it doesn’t.