HITTING THE MONOPOLIES.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 171, 28 October 1910, Page 3

HI TTING THE MONOPOLIES.

To the Editor. Sir,—ln Friday's issue you commence a sub-leader by stating: "Much twaddle is talked and written through Australasia about the nefarious methods 01 foreign trusts." 'Tis true, 'tis a pitv, and the pity is 'tis true even in 'Parana ki. I am tempted to try to convict von. in view of your remarks upon the above subject, of being one of the worst of the "twaddlers." "In essence," you say, "the public is not concerned with the way people make the<ir profits as long as the things they sell are good and cheap." This is the basis of your first and main argument, as well as your final conclusion. Do you realise what the statement, taken as it stands, means? The people must have good and cheap clothes, and, in essence then, it matters not that pregnant women and tired children may have worn out their miserable lives in stitching, stitching, stitching at them. Our firesides are cosy, and the coal companies prosperous, and it matters not whether the coal was won by men dying in their prime from their dreadful "miners' complaint," or working in fear of imminent death through neglect of their

masters to observe statutory requirements for protection of their employees' health. Our chains may be made by the white slavery of England's happy mothers at Crawley Heath, our rubber gathered by the black slaves of the Congo, our collars in the sweating dens of Belfast and our milk may be drawn by haggard women and children in God's Own Country—but it matters not; for why! the articles are good and cheap, and the profits are there. Behind the fair-seeming shops with their good and cheap wares, and the respectable merchants with their fat profits there may be "Mrs. "Warren's Profession," the slums, the unemployed, the sweated, the overcrowded, the maimed of the industrial army, and all the other victims of com ? mereialism—these things matter not, in essence. Kingsley, Hood, Ruskin, Shaw, Sinclair and all the rest lmve talked and may talk their twaddle about the social body and its members—that the members cannot be leprous and the body well. Cheap goods and fat profits for us—whence they are derived matters not, in essence. Lio you appreciate now, Sir, what your doctrine involves? To me, your gospel seems the true motto of the cynical capitalist, and the very negation of morality. I hope you like it—l don't. It has not even the virtue of being true. For does it not occur to you that "the public" are for the most part workers, and that the health and general wellbeing of those workers is the main concern of the public Those workers are the heart of the nation, and the conditions under which they live and labor, and the remuneration" they receive for their toil, and how they spend it, are just about as important to "the public" as the condition of the heart to the body. Cheapness and goodness of commodities are important only as "far as they contribute to that well-being. As for profits, perhaps we could dispense altogether with them, and yet be well. Further, cheapness and goodness of commodities occur together about once in a blue moon. To-day the terms are almost mutually exclusive. "Cheap and nasty," we say, not "cheap and good." Naturally so, too, for the struggle to make wares cheap involves all the trickery, the over-reach-ing, the adulteration, the desperate uncertainty, the "slumming," and all the other horrors of our present commercial world. If by chance the goods are cheap and good for the time being, then somebody has suffered —the workman, the manufacturer or the middleman —and that suffering reflects itself upon the whole public. But to you, in essence, it matters not. To attack your other arguments in this letter is impossible. Par haps I may be permitted to reply further , to-morrow.—l am, etc.,

SOCIALfST. [We merely took the point that the buying public is not concerned with tile people who produce goods, or the places they are produced in, so long ar> "the price is right" and the goods good. \\ ith the phase developed by "Socialist" the article was not concerned. The Cradley Heath chain-maker would take a "trust" loaf at 2d in preference to a probable Socialist loaf at 3d. This phase bounds our whole contention. Our correspondent is a cloud-dweller. Perhaps he may descend to the common earth and see and deal with things as they are and not as they should be in his next contribution.—Ed.]