CAPITAL AND WORK.

Taihape Daily Times, 12 May 1919, Page 3

CAPITAL AND WORK.

(By,Robert Blaiebford).

No man ought to have more than £5,000 a year while millions are in poverty, and while the slums exist. JSTo man needs more; no man can use more without doing harm to himself or others. I will give one example of the folly of the present system.

; Wc are paying an ex-Lord Chancellor, who served one year in that office, a pension (a life pension) of £5,000 a qear, and we have just granted Admiral Tyrwhitt, one of our most brilliant officers, for distinguished war service, a pension of £l5O a year. "Labour" does not think that is right.

Capital does not fall from heaven. Capital is The product of work. Capital has to be continually reproduceu" because it is continually being destroyed. Houses, factories, ships, railways, and machinery wear out, but they are replaced by work. We can never destroy capital unless we destroy the workers and the materials of nature. The blunder of the Russian Bolsheviks does not consist in their destruction, of property .but in their destruction of the intelligent section of the people who produce property;'' We could soon get over the destruction of all the surgeries and "hospitals of England, but. it would be a disaster if all the doctors were killed.

T have .always beiieved in the native goodness and sanity 'of the British people, and nothing has happened to shake my faith. But a sane and virtuous people will hot tamely submit to insult, and injustice, and they would be wrong to submit. The wisest man

cannot judge without data —facts. A jury must have evidence

Our people know that there is something wrong, but they do not. know the root of the trouble. They want to know. When hey get the facts they will behave, as they always have behaved—with reason and with patience But they want the facts.