State Trading

Dominion, Volume 25, Issue 272, 12 August 1932, Page 13

State Trading

Sir, —Under the heading "State Trading, Menace to Commerce, you report in your issue of August 2 an address delivered to the Reform Club by Mr. Harold Johnston, K.C., on the subject of “National Efficiency and State Trading.” When men of learning undertake to lead and uplift public opinion to a clear conception and practical understanding of matters affecting the national welfare, it is not only incumbent upon them to be free and unprejudiced in thinking, but alight with constructive ideas and aflame with enthusiastic practical, convictions which they mean to convert into materialised actions. Mr. Harold Johnston, in spite of his claim to a measure of “political education,” the lack of which he deplores among the people of New Zealand—even chiding them of “apathy and ignorance” of political matters, has miserably failed to allow a simple gleam of his supernal economic knowledge to filter through even into the ethereal space of helpful suggestions. He assumes in his opinion to foresee “absolute doom” to New Zealand unless some “stupid policy” practised in Australia is prevented from spreading here. What the referred to policy was is left to the imagination. To avert the pending day of doom which is creeping upon us as a direct and indirect cause of selfish “private enterprise,” with its private banking monopoly of credit and currency, land mortgage strangle-hold, and sole control of the products of industry and semi-starvation of millions of mankind, Mr. Johnston very politely offers us via the Reform Party another fatal dose of doosmday private enterprise dope. I would respectfully point out to Mr. Johnston that all party propaganda are rotten props to offer a nation drifting to economic disaster. He may deny the efficacy of Socialism, and by it the very meaning of Christ and Christianity, but he will never keep down the human claim and divine prerogative of the race to a right to live and develop man and God-ward. If State trading is wrong, why suffer governments to discuss butter, meat, wool, and all other products at Ottawa? In whose interest are they dealing with those matters —the people of the nations or the money magnates. Mr. Johnston seems to be deplorably out of touch with the age he lives in. To talk of “Adam Smith” and his theory of national policy as a modern pattern would be equally out of place as if proposing the monetary policy of aneient Babylon to modern Britain. The main question to-day is can the industries of the world be expected much longer to carry without crashing the unbearable burden of. interest on money and consequent taxation. Economists and statesmen agree that a crash is inevitable unless the weight of usury is lifted. The rise in price levels must be preceded with a rise in purchasing power among the people, and a system must be evolved whereby a constant relationship between production and consumption will function. It matters little to the people who provides the mode of marketing; it is the getting a living share of the national production that counts. The medium may be gold, silver, paper or copper, but its real value to the consumer lies in the faet that there is enough of it to meet hie requirements and accepted by the nation. The arbitration law may be of little use to, or in the opinion of Mr. Johnston, neither any other form of industrial law. The desire to exploit and depress the working class finds its roots in the selfish desire of accumulation of wealth at the expense of creating poverty. If man’s inhumanity to man had not disclosed itself in the murder of humau beings in mines and factories. there may have been no Trade Union Act, Factory Act. or Arbitration Act. We are now at the historical point unless man is allowed to consume the goods he creates, the result will be utter disaster. No, we have had experience over many years of, the Reform Party, and our candid opinion now is that nothing can be expected of it. We need men of courage and convictions, filled with the spirit of true leader-ship-I am, eto.,