ISN’T IT SO?

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 2584, 24 May 1923, Page 1

ISN’T IT SO?

Here’s what a business man wrote to his banker, when reminded that the bank desired him to reduce his overdraft: — Dear Mr Blank, —T would like to reduce my overdraft at once;, unfortunately I must ask for an extension and this is why.

I have been held up, held down, walked on, set upon, flattened out, and kept that way. First by our income tax, profits tax, war loans, peace loans, motor car tax, and by every society organisation the inventive mind of man has conceived, to extract what I may, or may not, have in my possession.

Every charitable society, all the hospitals, the thousand and one relief societies, the Austrian Reconstructive Society, the Society for the Rehabilitation of Disappointed Germans, the League for Turkish Uplift, the Bulgarian Betterment Benefit. Government has governed my business —dictated what hours I shall work and my employees shall work, what wages T must pay, what prices T shall charge, how I must run my business —although the Government has been conspicuously silent as to whether I am to receive any wages or not. I am inspected, suspected, examined and re-examined, informed, repaired and commanded. T don't know who I am, why I am, or why Tam here at all. All that Ido know is that I am supposed to be an inexhaustible supply for every known need, desire, or hope of the rest of the human race. Because I will not sell all T have «r go out and beg, borrow, or steal money to give away, I am cussed, discussed, boycotted, talked to, talked about, lied to, lied about, held up, hung up, robbed and nearly ruined. The only reason I cling to life now is to see what the hell happens next. —Yours truly, JOHN Wl HOPELESS.