LABOUR AND WAGES.

Auckland Star, Volume XLII, Issue 137, 10 June 1911, Page 10

LABOUR AND WAGES.

AN INTERESTING LECTURE. '"Everywhere on earth the cost of living is advancing more rapidly than is the purchasing power of wages." That is "the statement that Professor W. Mills yesterday asked his large audience to get firmly fixed in -their minds prior to following him through his explanation of how -the world's markets would be won without' war. Another statement he impressed on the meeting was that "the cost oT producing - the - means of living goes down all the while and the price we pay -for living goes up all the~jjrhile." These commercial results, he went on to show in his own brilliant' manner, were entirely independent of high tariff, low tariff, .and"independent .of the output of gold. Mr. Mills went on to illustrate in most iUummat'ing (and incidentally entertaining) fashion that the longer we jived, the harder we worked and the more we got in the shape of wages the less we were .able to buy with what we got. Especially vivid were his examples showing how the cost of producing had decreased in the last 50 years, "since you and I, were 'boys, Mr. Chairman." His "explanation of the highly specialised automatism ■which jnarks the production Si steHl tWi&yL ?&& and gripping. The lecturer went on to explain the actual significance of the market, which _he defined as a place where we sell what we have to sell, in order to buy what we need to have, and -he-stated that when the pr-ices a. man got "for" what he sold were fixed by one process, and the prices he paid for what' he required were fixed by an entirely dif-ferent-process, so that the one went up and the other down, it was a eapitai.crime against the" liuman. ra;ce. Elaborating 'further he"showed."that-there were- two markets, the one in-which men sold what -they had to sell, being a competitive marI ket, and t(he other, in which they bought their means of living, being a monopoly, imarket. He illustrated each to show that the competitive market brought the prices down almost to cost price, while the monopoly market tended to push the price up to a point only limited by the ability of "the people to pay the price. Incidentally he stated that if trades' unions offered every man an eight hour trade Trnion wages., .every man on the earth would join the union, but they could not do that because they did not own the means of employment and consequently could not give employment to everybody. The remedy,-stated Mr. Mills, was to abandon private monopoly, and substitute in its place public "monopoly; and to drive out personal and private interest operating against the common good. When the monopoly price went down, the purchasing power of money went up, the cost of living was lowered, and. tie standard of living was raised. TbeCresult; was that the people were a.ble toTtaJce.Out of the market with their wages what they had put into it with their labour- .". • The lecture-was full of fascinating littfeTstorips to—exemplify - the arguments, droll phrases, which kept up a constant applause and held the close attention of the audience. To-morrow afternoon, Mr. Mills, who is in New Zealand"under the auspices of -the Trades and Labour Council, will lecture in the" Opera House on "Despotism and and inthe evening he will speak again in the Royal Albert Hall.