The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 1917. THE COST OF LIVING.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 220, 14 February 1917, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 1917. THE COST OF LIVING.

(With which is incorporated The Tuihape Post and Waimarino News),

The uneasiness of waterside workers is giving some food for thought to people in our own community. One wants to know what they are fighting for if it is not for higher wages to compensate tor the Higher cost of living, and as everybody denies responsibility for the increased price of necessaries of life, where is reform to commence? Wo are asked how. •combines, trusts, and syndicates contribute. to-this starvation of the race and tire lowering of the national stamina.

We cannot make any pretensions to being able to bring special economic experience or knowledge to bear, but as our correspondent is particularly interested in railways we cannot quote anything more convincing than instance how the Carnegie trust made money and -helped to raise the cost of living. If any person who receives a cheque for one thousand pounds, and by merely altering figures he converts it into one for two thousand pounds, that amounts to forgery and is punishable by a long term of imprisonment, but if a trust controlling a company with a capital of one million, on which

it earns say, ten per cent, per annum, and by a stroke of the pen the capital of the company is made two million, the forthcoming year’s profits can only be five per cent, unless higher prices are exacted for the commodities in which it deals. A trust can do this sort of thing; can extort from the people double, treble, and quadruple, mcrethan the real value and there is no law to stop it. r ihe famous Carnegie case' shows how it is worked. Carnegie stated in the Common Pleas Court that his company did not possess assets or property, which in its legal capacity, it could transfer, worth .£50,000,000. In the same year by ■.vnat is called capitalisation, without Tic addition of one penny in cash, this was made into £65,000,000. A paltry fifteen millions were added on which ■„o take pi cuts. * More extraordinary ■ till, as showing the audacity of trusts .;iiS vW-.s in tae following year ex’.mnvccl fer £125,223,400, and the or,'jiial co “ ; pany that could not find local -assets and property, all told, to mil lor £50,000,000 now extracted *c l ‘ ts li'om the people on a fictitious ..-.ipit.-l of £125,233,400. By a process .4 watering” capital people are ecm-Wir-'l ro pay thirty shillings for a ten .''ilk ;- article. This doubling the e vr.me of cheques to bo foisted on lil.e can bn practiced by true Is, n-t i_ the individual tries it on the in-

dividual, he will find himself in the nets of the law. These trust operations are not confined to America, they are rampant all over New Zealand, and even cur State-owned public services are now being largely conducted on trust methods and principles. Taking our railways as an instance, the Government could not very well emulate trust methods, but they imported an outsider well-versed in such methods, and gave him power to practice them upon our people. Any request by railway servants for a rise in wages, owing to the immense increase in the cost of living, is met and resisted by our imported Commissioner just in the same way as it is met by railway trusts in other countries. He says the traffic will not bear the advance; meaning that if wages are raised railway charges must be raised. He tells the Government that higher wages must result in higher rates, and so railwayman are little better off than before, simply because rise must become general in all sections of labour, and all commodities increase in sympathy. This is how trusts increase prices by one of their methods; they simply alter the figures on the cheque, which represents the value received, to double or treble and tnen pass it on to the public to cash. The astounding thing is that the law permits it. Over capitalisation is one of the greatest curses on earth, and instead of tinkering, with petty stoppages of work, labour, should organise to compel the enactment of a law to end all forms of .legal robbery and exploitation. There are corporations in this country that have forced up the value of commodities in which they deal to such an extent that they have had to “'water” thqir capital half-a-dozen times to prevent the annual earnings, being more •than -.the itotril capital,invested.,: Will our correspondent riot,realise that it is by srich manipulations that the rise in the 7 cost of living'll; 7 very largely duo? The war will result in conditions obtaining in which common honesty will be more generally practiced. To say tliat the demands for higher wages are the prune cause of the rise in the cost of living is far less correct than spying that it is due to the alteration of the face Value of the cheque representing legal assets and property by mere substitution of figures, before it is passed on to the public to cash. Trust methods are the curse of the masses, but the war will number thendays. A 1 decent United States Government Commission on the subject gave as the causes of the increased cost of living, trusts, combines, and monopolies; the tariff, and the increased money supply.'