The Daily News. FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 1919. ECONOMICS.

Taranaki Daily News, 28 November 1919, Page 4

The Daily News. FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 1919. ECONOMICS.

It is gratifying to find the Taranaki Farmers' Union paying attention to the question of economies and taking steps to spread a knowledge of this important subject among farmers and the general public. 'With this end in view, it is proposed to invite well known public men to contribute short articles on the fundamental principles of economies, written in as simple language as possible, and to publish them in the press; also to arrange for a series of lectures to be delivered throughout the Dominion on similar lines. It is further proposed to establish in Taranaki an institute with a reference library, replete with a comprehensive system of filing. Until the war occurred little or no interest was taken by the public in economics, as shown by the fact that it was practically impossible to procure any one of the recognised standard books on economics in even the largest bookshops. The dislocation caused by. the war, however, has brought about a keener desire for knowledge on the subject. It is significant that in the educational course arranged for our soldiers after the armistice, and on their return home, the economic classes contained more members than any of the others. The manifestation of this interest must result in nothing but good at a time, like the present, when a knowledge of the operation of the fundamental economic laws is necessary to combat, the dangerous fallacies that are sedulously circulated by extremists and revolutionaries. To the latter, history teaches nothing; economics to thenr is like the Fourth Dimension. They aim' to overthrow the existing order of society and buil'd up afresh on their own lines. Their brethren of the Russian Soviets have lately been putting their revolutionary ideas into effect, and we know, the result. Never in the history of the world has there been presented such an awful spectacle of ruination, misery and violence. If the general public have securely ■fixed in their minds correct notions regarding the functions and relations between labor and capital, also land and organisation, the extremists' insane teachings will make no headway, and New Zealand will be safe enough. We are suffering at present from the

effects of the War and the policies brought into being because of the war. But there is no sovereign remedy for the ills that afflict us. They are the natural and inevitable consequence of the war. They arise partly from the destruction of wealth, partly from the inflation of currency and credit, partly from the influence of governments, more or less necessary during the war, with the normal I course of supply and demand, and I very largely from the enormous dislocation o! world industry in every direction. All these influences are at work in raising prices. Extreme labor preaches that nationalisation of all the important industries will effect a cure. But Government ownership and management cannot, as we have said on previous occasion, be beneficent to Labor unless beneficial to the community as a whole. Prom that fact no one can get away. Another fundamental error that would be dispelled by an understanding of the economic laws is 'that of assuming that the living conditions of the masses of the people can be improved by simply pushing up money wages and shortening hours of labor. It is possible than certain groups may improve their relative position in this way, making gains for themselves at the expense of other wage-earning groups, but such an accomplishment does not raise the general position of labor. The only gains that signify general benefits are those which represent an improvement in the standard of living for the masses of the people, giving more leisure and more of the comforts which they crave. These are gains for which society should unitedly strive, but wage advances alone do not bring them. Indeed, wage advances which simply put up prices on consumers are so disappointing that they result in embittering the wage-workers against the whole social order—thus giving the extremists an opportunity to sow their poisonous seed—because they feel that they have somehow been cheated out of what had been ostensibly conceded. If each line of industry would contrive to increase its production, instead of limiting production—the suicidal course advocated by the extremists—there would be more to offer in the exchanges, and it is evident that the workers in every line would have more for consumption. Only thus will the cost of living come down, and a remedy be found for the ills that now afflict us.