BONE AND SHADOW

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 125, 23 November 1923, Page 6

BONE AND SHADOW

It' is not surprising that the manifesto of the Communist Party in Great Britain, now issued to electors, should promise something thrt-fi In impsßßiblft to supply! ' In that the Commuuiste, ub a political

party, are not singular. But, according to the cablegrams published this day, they promise, if returned, to confiscate all idle factories, ensure a minimum wage of £4 per week, fully maintain the unemployed, and house all workers at the charges of the Government. This is the shadow offered to the electors for the bone they now have. Marx laid it down definitely enough that the proletariat had nothing to lose but its chains, and this clever phrase is accepted by countless numbers as the solemn truth, because they have either no time or inclination to turn it over in their minds to see its falsity. So it may be with the manifesto of the Communists as cabled- Why are there idle factories? Surely it is because those who have invested their capital in them have not enough business to keep them going at full capacity. Then where is the money to come from to fully maintain unemployed? Capital, no matter whether it is derived from savings on wages or salary, or the. fruits of investment, cannot 'be created except by employment on producing something—cotton piecegoods or pork, no matter what, so long as it is a necessary commodity or something else that people want. Government housing would have to be paid for, and that at a minimum wage of £4 per week on a six-hour day for labour in building ; the cost, of course, would fall on all taxpayers, direct and indirect. The value of money is what it will buy, no more and no less. If the Communists obtain support in the coming elections, it will probably be found that it will be for reasons other than the specious promises in their manifesto,' the insubstantial nature ,of which is Rrobably as apparent to their thinking supporters as it must be to those who framed it.