THE WAGE REDUCTIONS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 46, 24 February 1931, Page 6

THE WAGE REDUCTIONS.

Judging from recent happenings, it would appear that the destinies of this country are determined by remits passed at meetings of farmers' unions and chambers of commerce,For the last twelve months these organisations have conducted a systematic campaign of propaganda against workers in general and public servants in particular. Howls of indignation at the exorbitant salaries paid have resounded from one end of the country to the other, but all these outcries have been conspicuous by their absence of facts. There are many married men with families in the public service to-day whose salaries do not reach £4 a week by quite a few shillings. How can these men stand a ten per cent, or even a one per cent, "cut"? The majority of those responsible for the contemplated attack on these salaries could not keep themselves, let alone a wife and family, on what these men receive. A rapidly-growing section of intelligent economists and industrialists is at last realising the one solution to the crisis confronting the entire world to-dav, and that solution is the antithesis of the wage-cutting proposals to be put before Parliament next month. It is recognised that the cause is the workers' lack of purcliasing power —the outward sign of the hopelessly-unequal distribution of wealth which has become more evident of late through the agency of machinery. The main effect of a wage reduction will be to aggravate the present state of under-consumption and precipitate the universal crisis which is fast approaching. * BREAD LINE.