EQUAL WORK, EQUAL PAY

Waikato Times, Volume 127, Issue 21221, 18 September 1940, Page 9

EQUAL WORK, EQUAL PAY

(To the Editor) Sir, —Mr Warburton, though apparently quite honest in his opinions, has a very vague idea of capitalism. ! He sees in capitalism a system which “permits a striver to attain his just reward.” Now to my mind this is just what capitalism does not do. No matter how much a man may save or how hard he may work, under this system he can get comparatively nowhere till he becomes 'an employer of labour. Then, when he -has others working for him, and only then, can he become wealthy, j Mr Warburton sees in capitalism a * system that heaps riches on the heads of hard workers, and pours contempt in the form of penury on the lazy and shiftless. All too often the opposite is the case. For example, in America on September 28, 1938, Marshall Field 111 attained the age of 45 and received a fortune which brought him in an income of 20,000,000 dollars a year, plus 90,000,000 dollars of accumulated income. This, mind you, in a country with 16,000,000 unemployed. Now the point I wish to stress is that Field did not so much as lift a finger in the amassing of this wealth. Is was his only because he was bom of the right parents. Surely Mr Warburton will admit that any system is wrong that will permit such wealth to fall unearned into the hands of one man, yet will allow millions of others to starve because neither work nor food can be found for them. No, Mr Warburton, socialists do not say it is the striver who is the social pest. New for Mr Smythe. Capitalism is, broadly speaking, that system under which the means of production are owned by individuals to the exclusion of the mass of the people, and under which goods, however necessary for the people as .a whole, are produced only when they give a satisfactory profit to those individuals. I agree with Mr Smythe regarding financial slumps not being caused by capitalists. After all, these men are in business for the sake of profits, and slumps are fatal to profits. But Mr Smythe has not explained why slumps come. I must stress once again that socialists do not believe in equality of income but emphasise that a man should be paid according to the value of the work he performs.—l am, etc., G. A. CRABB. Frankton, September 17.