MONEY MANIPULATION

Wairarapa Times-Age, 31 October 1939, Page 4

MONEY MANIPULATION

MR SEMPLE’S CONDEMNATION. NEED OF ECONOMIC BACKGROUND. “Pray God that wisdom will prevail and that the • war will end shortly,” said the Minister of Public Works, Mr Semple, when condemning monetary manipulation leading to inflation in an address to members of the Buller Farmers’ Union at the weekend. “If you issue money without an economic background, you are travelling on the road to national ruin,” Mr Semple said. “To have value, money must have an economic background. If you issue money that has no substance behind it. you are on the road to inflation, which will ultimately bring a nation to its knees. “How can you create the additional value which will allow your money to expand, so that it will meet the needs of the buying and selling public? You can do it only by expanding the annual volume of production. When that annual value goes down, the income of the people automatically goes down with it. I want someone to knock holes in that statement. Money registers wealth.” Increased production could be obtained by using improved methods and additional value was needed, as never before, because the present war would not be won by bullets and bayonets, but by the nation that could stand the strain longer. In war, meat, butter and everything consumable, were just as effective as bullets and bayonets. Germany was not defeated the last time on the battlefield. She was beaten internally, when her economic and money system broke down and she crashed. The German people cried for bread and there was none for them.