PUBLIC WORKS AND THE NATIONAL ECONOMY

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22464, 27 July 1938, Page 17

PUBLIC WORKS AND THE NATIONAL ECONOMY

10 I'HE EDITOR OF THE TUESn Sir, —I wish to congratulate “Truth" on his splendid letter on the above subject. It. could hardly be expected that your leading article unaer the above heading would be anything but a criticism of the Government's public works policy. You state that “future historians will undoubtedly agree that the Labour Government was as unwisely lavish as the Coalition Government was unwisely economical. ' You seem to miss the fact that it was, good for us that the Coalition Government was “economical ’ in its public wof-ks expenditure. Had it been lavish vve should have had more railways started and eventually closed down, more "borrowed” money wasted through the rusting of rails and burying of tools. Then we have a stone throw from your office but evidently millions of miles from your mind, that fine monument to the Coalition Government’s public works polic- viz., Middleton railway marshalling yard, which cost, if I remembered rightly, a quarter of a million of borrowed money. As a railway employee at the time I well remember how the railway chaps used to joke about the stupidity of the Government. Now, which would you say was sane policy—build a white elephant like Middleton yard, construct railways, and before completion, close them down, or plan jobs under public works and carry them through to completion? The Coalition Government bprrowed money overseas for its job, and we have to repay. The Labour Government raises the money by means of taxation, taking the greater amount from those with the greater income. The comoleted lines will pay the interest at least, but uncompleted lines have no chance of earning one penny of revenue with which to pay even interest. You may. through your one-sided views as expressed in your leading articles, pull the wool over the eyes of a few, but your readers in the main would like you to be a little more fair in your criticisms.—Yours, etc., READER. Oaro, July 25, 1938. [Our correspondent’s question is easily answered. We do believe in planning public works and carrying them through to completion; but we do not believe in starting public worlds without proper Investigation and merely as a means of providing employment If our correspondent has been a regular reader of “The Press” he mav remember that we have frequently attacked past governments (including the last) for failure to plan public works. Moreover, we have advocated on numerous occasions the establishment, of a board, , comprehensively to survey the public works needs of the country, schedule them in order of importance. and carry them through within the economic limits imposed by the amounts aopropriated by Parliament for public works purposes. By this means the public works policy of the government of the day would be divorced from the expediency of party politics and meet the real public works needs of the Dominion. —Ed., “The Press.”]