Bleeding the Bleeders.

Maoriland Worker, Volume 2, Issue 16, 23 June 1911, Page 8

Bleeding the Bleeders.

Tho confiding and unsuspecting worker, whoso objections to social ownership of industry are borrowed from some Capitalist newspaper, company promoter, or stocK-jobber, is otten trouble*! in his mind on the question of public ownership and corruption. He assumes uiat tho glory of private enterprise and its effectiveness as a moral lortifier, so continually mouthed about by his employer, is all sober fact. Private enterprise, which exists only because the worker is williiig to sell his labor for a mess of pottage, in reality is based on downright robbery, none tho lees immoral because sanctioned by law. For instance.: A Wellington firm, a "loan and discount, trust and mortgage" concern, at its annual meeting produced a balance-sheet which showed that in thirty years the shareholders besides receiving thumping half-yearly dividends, had "saved" a reserve fund equal to their original capital. Tho chairman of directors stated that tho balance-sheet did not show tho rates of interest, at which money was borrowed by the company, or the rates at which tho company lent that money to others. What had been put into the report, ho declared, "was quite enough for the public to see." This same gentleman, a highly respectable individual in Wellington society, also said they had included their office furniture, etc., under a certain head, "to see if they could not get a little more taxation off." It is such concerns as these that reap the "fat" of- all new lands. The. average employer here is usually headi over ears in debt to these leeches. His. profits can accrue only after . these "trust and mortgage" gentry have had! their "pound of flesh." Their charges he cannot escape or reduce ; the work-_ ers' wages or tho price of the goods, or both, must bear tho added cost. And so on right through the list. The landlord as well as the employer, tho tradesman as well as tho shopkeeper, all are . taking a hand in tlie. merry, game, of fleecing tho worker. Their methods may differ in name—one calls his share of tho spoil rent, another in-" terest, a third profit and another dividend, but the result is the same—to the worker. When these vultures havo finished their repast, he goes up to the pay-desk and accepts his. "wages"' with a smirk arid a thankful heart.