Citizens Say

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 908, 27 February 1930, Page 10

Citizens Say

(To the Editor.)

CAUTIOUS CRICKET

Sir, — I am not a cricket enthusiast, but my son recently persuaded me to accompany him to one of the matches recently played in Auckland against the M.C.C. team. Now I wish to be fair, so I must first state that Duleepsinhji and Woolley were out by the time I arrived. What I then saw was a display of cautious cricket that lulled me to sleep. Occasionally I opened an eye to see a ball being over-thrown by New Zealanders. But the general impression produced upon me was that more vigorous cricket might have been seen on any secondary school playing field or in any back alley for that matter. What is wrong with cricket? We have had many royal commissions! It mightn’t be a bad idea to have another to give a ruling on this important question! TUATARA.

MR. FIELD’S WORK

Sir,— Many will join with “Aldeba.ran” in protesting against the injustice done to Mr. Field —against the loss inflicted upon New Zealand and humanity—by what looks like purely selfish opposition. When visiting the north some months ago, Mr. Field told us of the break in the weather, and earthquakes which threatened, about February 11 and 12, and said we might expect flooded rivers about that time. Verification of such predictions does not astonish one who has followed Mr. Field’s career. To my knowledge, Mr. Field, when quite a boy, held one of the most responsible mathematical positions in this country, and it was said even then by distinguished scholars who watched his work that he would live to astonish the world. Fulfilment of that prophecy began about seven years ago, when Mr. Field declared that he had fathomed the mysteries of that movement which pervades the whole of creation —rotation —and claimed that the discovery threw a great flood of light upon the whole realm of science. He said that, in explaining evolution throughout the universe, it made the sun’s workings intelligible to us; it laid bare the whole past and future history of the earth; it explained all terrestrial phenomena; it even had to do with the mysteries of life and death. Was it possible that one man, in one giant stride, should thus surpass his predecessors in all branches of science, and leave nothing greater for others to do? Certainly it seemed incredible. Without trying to attempt any complete investigation of this life work of an undoubtedly able man, our local scientists hastened to heap upon Mr. Field and his work an amount of scorn which left him almost completely discredited here and abroad. The work was already too vast and abstruse to be readily sent for investigation in other countries, and it was daily being extended. In the face of overwhelming

prejudice, without the proper time and facilities for his research, without the help that ought to have been extended to him, but with implicit faith in his fundamental discoveries, Mr. Field quietly worked onward. From first to last he has continued to show startling evidence in support of his amazing discoveries. No one has disproved any of his work. On the contrary, the few able men in England and elsewhere who have sought to study it declare that, though some of it is too deep for them to grasp, the work is undoubtedly sound. We all know that it is possible, though very improbable, for anyone correctly to guess the time and place of an earthquake. But when we find a man successfully forecasting, year after year, scores of earthquakes, and many other unexplained phenomena which seem to have no association with one another, we must admit that he is possessed of some new and wonderful knowledge. Mr. Field has already contributed to the Press enough to fill a fair-sized volume. His letters in The Sun have attracted much attention. But it is not till one has listened for hours to Mr. Field’s discussion of science generally that one is reminded of the Queen of Sheba’s words: “The half has not yet been told.” W.G.S. Dargaville.

FINANCIAL CYCLES

Sir,— In your issue of 19th inst., Mr. E. Davies asked me to explain precisely the means by which I think the compounding of money causes financial stringency. Although it would require a volume to explain the matter fully and convincingly, I will endeavour to state a few facts concisely which, to men of Mr. Davies’s intelligence, should prove conclusively that it must be so. If £ l were put out at compound interest long enough, say, at 5 per cent, (and a good deal of money is invested at a much higher rate than that), all the gold in the world would be insufficient to pay the debt. In less than a thousand years all the wealth of the world would be insufficient to meet the bill. If then, as is the case today, tens of thousands of people all the world over are seeking investments for (in the aggregate) millions, how is it possible to find profitable investments for this money? When no safe and profitable investments can be found, those with money to lend prefer to leave it idle in the banks than risk losing it, or, rather, than lend it at, say, 1 per cent, interest. The natural consequence is a contraction- of the currency which makes it impossible, for even those in a fairly sound position (or who imagined they were, while the currency was buoyant) find they cannot meet their interest and other liabilities. Result, general collapse of money market and trade depression. Let us view the matter from another standpoint. It is commonly said that monev doubles itself at compound interest, 5 per cent., in 14 h years. Now the truth is that money never doubles itself. If

you put a ton of gold in the vaults of a bank or anywhere else, weighed it be* fore putting it there, and came alon£ 15 years later and weighed it again, you would find, unless some had been stolen, exactly the same weight as ye" deposited 15 years previously. Whence, then, is the true source of interest; Interest, like wages, rent, taxes and profits, which are all derived from the same source, is derived from the annual produce of the nation: e.g.. the farmer tills his land and plants, say- a a ton of potato seed. A few months later he digs up twenty-fold w-hat he planted. That t wenty-«f old provides a fund- out of which he can pay f® r the seed, manures, etc., required to grow the crop, and also to pay k“ rent, interest, wages, taxes and. if b* is lucky, provide a profit for himseL So likewise the manufacturer, once provided with raw material and labour, converts his raw material wealth (or commodities in dcma.lfc which yields a profit w-hich enables M| to pay his interest, rent, etc., like tf* farmer. Thus we see that the trud source of interest is a share of tn« annual produce of the nation. that -would be all very well if moneylender would take his interest ni kind and consume it, but there ate many who have no thought of tl'.t kind. And thus we get a glut of goods which the moneylender will not buyHe demands gold. The banks hay® not the gold because the gold has noincreased one ounce, except so fan fresh supplies are annually produced from the mines. But this gold has u* own owners. Hence a general collpasea prices, wool down, butter down, aby mortgagees foreclosing on unfortunate farmers and other producers. unetft ployment rife because the men ’r’E the money refuse to invest it u ll -? 99 they can invest at a profit and receive that profit in gold on demand. ’ C. F. W. LONGDlLL.Whangarei,