The Daily News. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 1911. THE CAPITALISTS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 85, 30 September 1911, Page 4

The Daily News. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 1911. THE CAPITALISTS.

It is generally agreed that the world is richer and better intellectually and physically than it ever was before. In a recent article we discussed the remarkable essay of Mr. George Paish, who infers that the increase in wealth is generally shared by persons and people alike. The student of modern social movements immediately asks himself to I question why, if wealth is fairly distri- | buted, have there been widened labor disturbances by the people who have j created this appalling wealth? The governor of the Bank of England made one 1 comment on Mr. Paish's essay: "I believe that in the future production will be more expensive." That is to say, tho workers will refuse to increase the wealth of the wealthy unless they get a larger share of the proceeds of their labor. Mr. C'hozzia Money, wu a bias for humanity in the bulk, asserts that the savings of the masses arc a miserable fraction of the wealth of the nations and that interest is drawn by the very smallest proportion of the peopb. "It may be a source of pride," fays Mr. Money, "that we are developing the waste places of the earth; that trees are being cut down we have never seen and mine's being developed of which v;i> know nothing." He also holds that, sufficient capital is not being put into the interests of the Home Land, into housing, into city and town improvements, and he warned his hearers that "the best British life blood was going out of Britain."' lie also spoke of the business economist who had boasted that in 1889 a skilled worker and his family could be maintained in efficiency on 21s 8d a week. What has happened in the interval? Prices have gone up 10 per cent, since IS9O, and the economic man must spend to-day 23s or 24s in order to secure a minimum of physical efficiency. His poverty line took accoui't of only 4s as the rent to be p.",id; but what is 4s for rent in London, in Manchester, in Leeds? Out of this 21s Sd, or out of the 23s or 24s of to-day, what has the man to spend on clothing, furnishing and so forth? It is a mere shilling or so. If tliev need something in the way of furniture, they have, to resort to the hire-purchase system, and to purchase one or two sticks which it would be a libel to call furniture. If they are to buy household utensils, they must be cheap and miserable products. If thev are to purchase clothes ihey must, be mere shoddy, and if thev are to have anything in the way of decoration they must be trinkets of the cheapest and most, garish kind. The great masses of the people are. «ays the authority. really poorer than they were ten or fifteen years ago. anil as a consequence trades cannot. e\pand for home account. It is not a good thing for the country that, simultaneously with the fall in real wages received by the n a;ses of the people, there should be. on the other hand, a vastly increased profit- drawn by the few people who possess the capital and land, because it means the unhealthy development of the industries. Professor Smart, of Glasgow University, in his criticism of Mr. Paish, said: ''l hold that the cure for most of our economic evils is not to be hoped for in any mechanical redistribution. but in a progress of wealth so great as to allow a constant rise in real wage, and to make every sober wage-earner a 'capitalist' as well. Everyone recognises that the handicap cf the working man is that lie cannot put a !■< serve price on his labor or on tie labor of bis children, and so has neither the time nor the chance of employing it where it would be most remunerative, and, at tho same time, most profitable

to the community. Oive him some capi-1 tal, and this handicap disappears." Pro- i lessor Warwick made the point that in i every community in which wealth is J most rapidly increasing the outstanding characteristic of the people is their j growing discontent, restlessness and (lis-1 satisfaction. Secondly, the method of wealth development extolled by Mr. Paish has never yet been freed from this ominous difficulty, that it increases parasitism through an ever larger proportion of tlio population. And it is not easy to see how progress or prosperity is compatible with either growing discontent or growing parasitism. Miss B. Tj. Hutching*, another economic critic, instanced the. irregularity of work, the heartlcssness of the modern moneybag, the demoralisation that comes to the man who is dependent on odd jobs, the sweating of women and children, the iniquity of slums, the increase of rents, man," of the owners having enormous wealth. "Ts it possible to feel so very proud of tlio growth of wealth in the face of such facts as these?" she asks. | "Again, Mr. Paish seems to have overlooked the fact that part of the increase of wealth consists simply in economic rent. Tlio. workers toil, the genius invents, the capitalist saves, the able and enterprising direct and organise, and part of the result of their efforts is that someone else can charge them all higher for the privilege of living and working on liis land." Tn all communities the man who holds the land holds the people in the hollow of his hand.