DU FRANK CRANE’S DAILY EDITORIAL

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 135, 29 August 1927, Page 14

DU FRANK CRANE’S DAILY EDITORIAL

THREE ELEMENTS OF PROSPERITY (Copyright, 1027) rpHE standing riddle which Europeans cannot understand is how the United States does two things at the same time. That is, how it pays high wages and has low prices. High wages ought to mean high prices and low prices ought to mean low wages, according to the common understanding. There are some who think that labour alone produces values. They think of the labouring man as making all the products of the country, while capitalists and managers merely live off them. Others think that it is the capitalists who are responsible for our porsperity. On the contrary, prosperity is the result of three things and these three things tend to produce high wages and low prices. The three things are: First, brains: second, labour; and third, capital. It is because we have all three of these things in the United States that we prosper. Of course, this implies that we must be at peace. War is purely destructive and the work of construction takes place only in the absence of armed conflict. You must have labour, of course. There must he certain men willing to work with their hands and to bend their backs in the work of the world. Without this there is no production. « But this work must be intelligently directed. Waste and overhead must be reduced to a minimum and salesmanship must be perfected as a science. Without brains to direct it labour is a dumb giant. Where there is co-operation between the managers and the labourers and where there is no war between the labourers and society, production leaps forward. In addition to this there must be capital to provide the tools and the machinery with which to work. This is an age of machinery. The population of a country should be estimated in horse-power of machinery rather than in man-power of human hands. Capital supplies this machinery and gives the labourer a chance to work profitably. Russia tried the experiment of labouring without capital and soon collapsed. It cannot be done. An important element in the prosperity of the country is the large amount of capital accumulated from small sources all over the country. This capital is poured into factories, and mines and fields, and gives labour a chance to work advantageously. These three elements, therefore, will be found to contribute to our success: I.abour at good wages, plenty of capital and intelligence to direct the use of both.