WHAT THE EXTREMISTS WANT

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 2330, 17 September 1921, Page 4

WHAT THE EXTREMISTS WANT

IN SEARCH OF THE IMPOS-

SIBLE.

DUD NOTIONS OF ECONOMOICS,

The extremist Labour agitator keeps his place very largely by boasting and bluffing. When there is plenty of work and it is easy for the worker to secure the highest wages for their labour, the extremist beats the big drum, struts arourid and shouts “I’m the man who got you these increases; follow me.” Where the rank and file suffer is that they often take this boasting as gospel truth, and follow into trouble. What the extremists demand is easy to surmise"; they call for higher wages, shorter hours, more goods, greater power, less responsibility. Therg is only one answer to such demands—they are impossible. The old adage, “You cannot eat your cake and have it too,” fits. Higher wages with greater production, yes, that is practicable. Higher wages with less and less production—Oh, no, it is not possible to run industry thus. It simply cannot be done. It is the veriest “dud ’ notion of economics to think that you can take out of a business more in costs than the goods will sell for; one might as well try and draw out of a cistern more water than runs into it.

Higher wages spell greater cost of production. Shorted hours, below a health medium, mean less production. The wild eyed one then calls for less production at a greater cost and increased supply of the goods thus created. We have heard people say that these mischiefmakers should be sent to gaol. That would be a mistake. It is the wrong institution that is suggested. In a civilised community we do not pul the mentally afflicted in gaol. These unfortunates who sincerely advocate such economics of destruction should be cared for until cure is effected. As for those who know better but continue, from personal motives, to agitate for the impossible extremes which land our communities in trouble,- the punishment we would like to see meted out to them is to place them on an island by themselves under compulsion, to carry on under the scheme of economics they now wish to force upon other people. They would increase their cost of production, shorten their hours of work, and call for more supplies until their voices failed.

The Trade Unionists of a constructive cast of thought, who look facts in the face and waste little time in dreaming about the perfect Communist State, we have much respect for. It is wearying to the patience, however, to hear the constant cry of the extremists of “give give, give,” as if all wealth was easy of production, and all that is required is a general division after each stop-work meeting. The thinkers of the world to-day, whether socialists, individualists, or between these, are all agreed that more production is required. It is the talkers, schemers, dreamers, and misicaders who constitute the real stumbling block lo progress. —Contributed by the N.Z. Welfare League.