THE PRODUCTS OF INDUSTRY.

Taranaki Daily News, 18 June 1919, Page 7

THE PRODUCTS OF INDUSTRY.

To the Editor, i Sir,—ln your leading article in Monday's paper on "Dividing, the Product of Industry" is of much interest at the present time. Professor Bowley's figures, whilst as accurate as estimates of i tKis kind caii be, are far from unimpeachable. He probably used the In-; : come Tto Returns to a large* extent, and I there are many persons who from personal knowledge could impeach these figures.. Still, the probability is that the Professor's estimates, are as accurate as possible under the circumstances. The figures, do not prove all' that they set, out to.. Mr and Mrs> Sydney Webb said: "That two-thirds of the. population, thai, is to say, the manual working class, obtain for all their needs 'only one-third: of the produce of eaeh< year's work." How do the professor's figures compare with, this statement 1 He estimates that 15,650,000 wage-earners received in 1911 £782.000,000 for their work. Of these •are shop-assistants who received £OO,000,000, leaving 14,750.000 manual' workera to receive £722,000,000. The professor estimates the National Income for 'the year at £2,100,000,000. This tabulated reads as follows: Wealth cre'ated, £2,100,000,000; manual workers' share,. £722,000,000. Manual workers' share of total wealth created during year therefore equals 34.3 per cent, so that Mr and Mrs Webb's estimate of onethird is confirmed l>y the professor. Professor Bowley says, however, that £200,000,000 of the National Income is derived from foreign investments and therefore should not be taken into account, so that we have: National Income, 1911, £2,100,000,000; less income from foreign investments, £200,000,000, £1,900,000,000. Of this sum all wageearners received £782,000,000, or 41.2 per cent of the wealth created. Now let us re-write Mr and Mrs Webb's estimate: "The manual working-class with the addition of 900,000 shop-assistants (and forming, with their dependents, more than two-thirds of the population) obtain for all their needs only 41.2 per cent, of the produce of each year's work, even if all the interest on foreign investments is excluded." Now let us look at another page of the professor's book. The unearned income for 1911 was £669,000,000. Practically the whole of this goes to less than 300,000 persons. Now we get this comparison: 14,750,000 persons wealth creators, £722,000,000 income, £4B 19s per head; 900,000 persons wealth distributors, £60,000,000 income, £6O 13s 4d per head; 300,000 persons wealth consumers, £669,000,000 income, £2230 per head. This means that the vast majority get in round figures £49 each for creating wfealth; whilst a comparative few, who toil not nor spin, consume £2230 of the wealth created by others. Again it means that 300,000 drew for doing nothing, nearly as much as 15J millions got for doing everything. If, as the professor says, '"the whole of the wealth produced before the war was only sufficient to provide everyone with a modest sufficiency," does this not prove that the people who consumed £2230 were robbing the remainder of a sufficiency? Mr Smellie does not want other people's money, he or-'y wants che workers to have the use of their own money. If the employer must have the incentive of profit in addition to a salary why do you ask the worker to give of his best without a like incentive? The immutable cake law is immutable no longer. The worker has travelled a long way during the last four years. He begins to° see that unless he makes the cake there is np tea-party. He is willing to share with the man who tells hiin how to mix it, but he also wants to know why he cannot have a share of the banquet he spreads out. Under a rational system, a large number of people now wasting their lives by not working, and a larger number still, now engaged in unproductive work, would cease to waste tiie product created by others, but would themselves share in the work of th? world—add to the real wealth of the community—and then most things necessary for each person's welfare would be at their disposal. When the winK, become thoroughly convoy—facts relating fc IndnstrW Zlnj, £° r outTte V beC ° me lmmana geable, thin** tf 4 unrest wiii come something better: _ a more equitable system. Z?, re J™ J l3 !ar gely, almost entirely, ™s hand 3of workers. All wealth is neated by the labor of brain and hand, the creators should control, and will control, their creation.-I am, etc., W. NASH.