DEAL WITH MEN

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 367, 31 October 1932, Page 2

DEAL WITH MEN

BISHOP'S ADVICE

CONSUMER THE PIYOT OF THE ECONOMIC SITUATION. PROBLEM OF PRODUCTION. D,r. Temple, .ArchbishQp .of Yopk in tlie course of a lengthy contribution* in the "ConteiftpoTaTy Review," deals With what he terms "A Ne.w Problem in Econoinics," and refei,'S to an inquiry which" is taking place Which he asserts "the public . should widely and carefully follow." - "We all know that in industry today oue man can produce "what would once have employed twenty men iror more. The new' appliances are called" lahour-saving maehinery. All through the nineteenth century, with rapidly expanding markets, it could be assumed that the results of the economy so effected could he invested and' that the market would sufficiently expand to absorb the additiohal'product," writes Dr. Temple. "It is no longer true that demand expands at the same pace as production. In the system under which we have'lived it has heen ine vitahle that lahour-saving maehinery should be used not directly to savej labour but to save lahourers. We have gone on the supposition that labour is a eommodity to be sold in the market like any other commodity and therefore to he sold as dear as the sellei" can sell and to be bought as cheap as the buyer can buy. Man's Labour Not Like Goods. "But labour is different from every' other commodity, because it is inseparable from the labourer. When a man sells me a pair of shoes he can do it without affecting his mind or hody in any way. But in selling his labour he is selling not only his hody but his mind. You are getting out of tha . range of commodity into personality. ■ But it is not possible to give mueh reeoghition to that in the system under which we have been living. ,, "The trouble is that currency, or money, has been hound up with production, as a result of the great advance of the nineteenth century, instead of being bound up with the capacity to produce.- If you make that change in your mind, the result will be that you want money to he available for members of the community in. relation to its capacity to produce; hut if this is done you must effect some combination with the existing tradition; because if you made that changi pure and simple the result would he you would have a policy of the kind generally called inflation, a debased or deteriorated currency. New School of Thought. "The aim of the new school of oconomic thought is to ereate demand by distribution of such purchasingpower as will set all the nation's productive plant working. But, if it were

distrihuted irrespective of the share taken in aetual production, most people would take no share, and production would cease just as much as now when purchasing-p ower is not available. "But it remains true that in large measure people are thinking only of producing and not of any -effort to increase or distribute purchasing power. After all, some of our home industries have continued to flourish just because the unemployed have had some money to huy goods and so made a demand upen them. The dole has partly saved the home market. What we must keep in our minds is that, if only you can get a good market, the market sets the process of production going. "The consumer is really the pivot of the situation; but the problem of production has been so acute that our attention has been fastened on that. I Now^ there are a number of people at this moment trying with very great thoroughness to work out what ef4 fects such a transformation ' would have upon our economic system. • It is desirable that the public should more widely and carefully follow that line of inquiry. "I do not imagine tbjat any of those who are following it have thought it through to the end or have any recommendation upon which we could act now or upon which it would be reasdnable to act until hy other

means the nation has rescued itself from the present immediate crisist But even when that is done we shali merely pass from one crisis to another more acute than the last unless something .along these lines is attempted. j Moieover, this way of approaching the matter is really more consonant with Christian principles than most approaches, because it begins with people instead ;of heginning with things. We are rather fond of saying ! that 'things axe in the saddle and ride mankind,' and having thus quoted j some ingenious person's epigram we j think we have summed up the matter J and we leave things to go on riding men. ■ I Things and Men. There is no value in things 'except I as they are of use to man. Once the I system^ has got on the top of us so that we have no longer the freedoni I left for men to choose their manner I of conducting it and the course which } seems to them to have most claim to | their allegianee, we are living on a suh-human level. It is because this j way of dealing with the question J starts from consideration of citizens, I whether employed or not, as an es- J sential factof in the welfare of the I community, that I think it is fundam'entally Christian. t The plea is thaij we should think j first not of making production profitable hut of making produce marketable. If the details of such a scheme fall outside the area of Christianity its principles ' do not. • For* we are hemg most truly Christiaii if we- start deahng not with goods but with men, and seek to provide for them the rich'est possible human life in the closest possible human fellowship "