The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE. MONDAY, MAY 10, 1920. WORLD-WIDE ENTERPRISE?

Taihape Daily Times, Volume XI, Issue 3482, 10 May 1920, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE.

MONDAY, MAY 10, 1920. WORLD-WIDE ENTERPRISE?

With which is incorporated “The Taihape Post and Waimarino News.”

When the Jew, as the old story goes, told his son that the one great aim of his life was to be the getting of money, getting it honestly if he could, but, anyway, to get it, he laid down very clearly and tersely the tenets of the religion of modern commercialism. There are very few people now, living, or trying to live, who will deny that the Jew’s advice to hi s son has become the one article of faith, the chief corner stone of the present day average commercialist, or. as he is now more understandably, vernacularly termed, the profiteer. It is rampant in all communities in all countries, and its practice has become so much the vogue that the flimsiest pretence only is made to conceal it. Commercialism has grown so bold that it can afford to stand forth publicly waving its claymore of corruption in the face of all laws and all governments. So openly and shamelessly is it being practiced that It is gaining converts in every class of society, completely linking up with the sneak thief and the highway robbery classes> It is an alarming prospect, but who will deny its truth? What matters is, does the spread of profiteering, otherwise thieving and robbery lead to peace and the attainment of the highest human ideals, or is it on the wide way to war, revolution, destruction, misery and degradation? People who have limited possessions experience the fact that their little is being filched from them dishonestly, and so the masses have begun to ape the methods of those who are robbing them, and they are finding ways and means of accomplishing their aims. There is no doubt that wharf labour has become a victim to the cult that does not base profits on cost; the loss from goods in transit can now be calculated in millions, but it must not be assumed that the pilfering of wharf labour amounts to anything so alarmingly extensive; Wharf labour scarcely takes the trouble to take a load of foreign bricks down to the wharf and neatly stack them into cases from which valuable cargo is removed. Such things cannot safely he practiced on wharves, they are more likely to originate in warehouse packing rooms, and it is not improbable that some one in the higher ranks of commercialism than the wharf labourer and the packer is entitled to share the enterprise that disappoints and angers the commercialist consignee. In cooler moments he will probably conclude that some more enterprising profiteer has merely got in before him. Having reasoned the thing out he will most assuredly realise that profiteering enterprise is not the exclusive right of any one class, and if there is a spark of conscience left in him it will probably reflect the doubt as to whether the word right comes into the transaction at all. His goods were either never in the case or they were removed and replaced with bricks, a commodity much less valuable than those removed; but if what was ordered did come to hand he i would have done something just as dishonest in placing a value upon what the case contained that would contstitute an insult to men of loosest commercial morality. A cablegram received on Saturday somewhat clarifies the stage at which dishonest practices have arrived; it came from Ausi tralia, and stated, “In connection with | the prevalence of cargoe thieving in New Zealand it is stated to be me resuit of world-wide enterprise.” Here it is laid down that what another sec-^ ! tion of thieves vulgarly term cargothieving should not be so called; it even infers tbaf there is some atmosphere of legitimacy about cargothieving, the inference going so far as to convey the idea that it is quite legitimate so fbng as other profiteers concerned cannot evolve means .for preventing it. In other words, consignors and consignees have a weakness in their armour which wharf labour and other labour have discovered, and it is only quite within the four corners of the Jew’s advice to his son that labour should legitimately exploit that weak spot. It is presumedly bad taste to call it cargo-thieving, when it is merely an aspect of world- ' wide enterprise. Indeed, the cablegram seems to rebuke those who i hypocritically regard it. as being out- : side the domain of the profiteer, give ' to it dscreditable appellations, and ’ describe it in vulgar terms. The moral : code of commercialism protects those i enterprising individuals who substi- i tute foreign bricks for valuable cargo j just as solicitiously as it does those i who take from New Zealahd wool i

|some 3300 per cent profit, and the jshipowners who double t'Zleir paid-up ‘capital, with one yesr’s operations!W'ha.t should, it seems, ‘deeply concern 1 the hugely preponderating 110116311‘ [minded people is the problem of What ~the words “honest and fair trade” are to convey from now on into the future. “The world-wide enterprise gof the worker Saul is profiteering in ‘millions while the Commercialist David is talfing ‘dishonestly his huh’ dreds of millions. Whether commercialists regard cargo-thieving as busi‘ness enterprise, or whether all other trade robbery is rendered legal by viciously applying to acts which can never be anything but dishonest, speciously confusing phrasenlogy, cargo-thieving and basing profits on anything but cost will for ever remain the meanest, most contemptible and degrading barnacles that ever fastened on to the World’s trading systems. A cominercialist government has ap{pointed Boards of Trade and other lwatch dogs to zealously guard the 7 processes of commercialism; when the a system of robbery is likely to be assailed by revolutionary acts of the people, a bone is thrown out in the form of higher wages, and this has the desired quietening effect. Can nit be to the advantage of any community or nation to have one—tenth of the people straining every effort to give as little as ‘possible of the necessaries of life for the wage-earners’ money, While the other nine-tenths, aping the processes of the one-tenth, are striving and striking to give no more labour than they can‘ help? The only governing factor in increasing wealth is production; if New Zealand is, as statistics quoted by the Prime IMinister were intended to show,‘ exporting very many more millions worth of commodities than is import- 1 ed, why is there all the fuss about] paying civil servants a wage on which they can live respectablyi If over twenty millions of net profits are coming into this country annually Where is the money going to? It is a novel feature of commercialism which seems to be trying to “give cargotheiving an air of respectalbility by stating that it is merely theresult of “world-wide enterprise.”