"YOU KNOW NOTHING!"

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 190, 13 August 1928, Page 1 (Supplement)

"YOU KNOW NOTHING!"

BUSINESS LEADERS SCOLDED MR. BRUCE'S "INSULTING MOOD." DIFFICULTIES OF GOVERNMENT. The Prime Minister of Australia, the Kt. Hon. Stanley Bruce, who usually maintains towards his audience at such affairs an attitude of smiling detachment. described to members of the Sydney Chamber of Commerce recently, in words that made them quite fidgettv their essential and profound ignorance upon the things which burden a statesman in Australia. "There isn't one of you who wouldn't talk Government economy to everybody you met in the street or the club. But let me assure you that not one of you has the foggiest notion of what our finances mean," said Mr. Bruce. "In tact, there isn't one of you who would be ready to sit at a table with me and defend your notion of economy. Search your conscience and admit that you know nothing about it. If you do that, honestly, then go awav and find out, what the Government is doing, and be-' come an intelligent audience, instead of remaining a talkative but hopelessly misinformed one.

"If you want a better understanding in industry," Mr. Bruce said later, "it is necessary for the employer to face the task of discovering what problems irritate and torture the workers. Having discovered that, you must formulate a policy to destroy the poisonous atmosphere of suspicion.

"Everybody in the room would attack the Government's borrowing and its spending of loan money. But you know nothing about the business, nothing at all. I'm sure that there isn't one of vou, apart from Mr. Stevens (the AssistantState Treasurer), who could say at this moment upon what the Commonwealth Government is spending its loan money this year. Let me tell you that if we are going to achieve the prosperitv of which this country is capable we must spend money.

"I'll give you an example of what I mean when I say that you often talk of affairs without considering them. A committee—an honorary committee—recommended recently the construction of a railway to connect the western part of New South Wales with Queensland. Now that railway will reap more than its cost by a saving of national wealth every time the country suffers a bi" di ought. But Ini satisfied that everyone of you would be prepared to make very definite statements about that line. For goodness sake know what vou are taking about."