“SHEER COMMUNISM”

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 48, 20 November 1928, Page 10

“SHEER COMMUNISM”

STATE AND MUNICIPAL TRADING ACTIVITIES

EX-NEW ZEALANDER

appalled

Mr. Robert Bell, of Christchurch, who has been on a six months’ visit to Alaska, North-west Canada, and California, returned to New Zealand yesterday by the Maunganul, and will go south to-night. “In San Francisco,” said Mr. Bell yesterday, “I had a conversation with a business man, a native of New Zealand and he asked many questions about his native land. He was particularly pleased to hear that the fine climate’and beautiful scenery was attracting many tourists; that production from the soil was increasing and the export trade expanding. When, however, 1 told him of governmental and municipal trading activities he was appalled, and said : ’This is sheer Communism. There can only be one end to that. It will destroy all ambition and initiative in business men and gradually lead to the withdrawal of capital from tlie country. You tell me about the so-called cheap money the Government is finding for mortgages and that private tenders and also thrift institutions such as building societies, insurance companies, and the like, are being driven out of the mortgage market. That is inevitable. Your Government gets cheap money on the London market by pledging the credit of tlie country and its citizens and then proceeds to undercut those citizens by one-half per cent. A most iniquitous state of affairs! Looking ahead a few years it is conceivable that the Government will be the sole mortgagee. What then? Why, the mortgagors, the people of the country, will tell the Government of that day that it is only the servant of the people and that they refuse to pay interest or repay capital. That’s how it looks to me. As a newspaper man you should be unceasing in your efforts to ‘scotch’ this iniquitous state of affairs, for I feel that if all these activities of your Government and local bodies continue, New Zealand, my native land, will not be worth living in by hard-working, progressive or self-respecting people.’ ” As president of the Press Congress of the World, Mr. Bell has been making preliminary arrangements for the next session of the congress, which will be held in Ottawa, the Canadian cap ital. in July, 1929. The three previous sessions of the congress were held respectively in San Francisco in 1915, Honolulu in 1921, and Geneva, Switzerland. in 1926. Mr. Bell is especially pleased that the conference to be held during his presidential term will take place for the first time on British soil. He hopes that a representative number of New Zealand and Australian newspaper proprietors and journalists will accompany him to Canada in May or June next.