FOOLISH TALK

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 86, 8 October 1930, Page 10

FOOLISH TALK

There were three things wrong with the resolution adopted by the stop-work meeting of the Federated Seamenfs Union yesterday. - The facts were mostly incorrect, the argument was unsound, and the remedy was impossible. The only good point of the resolution was that it was so obviously ridiculous that no persons with common sense are likely to do more than laugh at it. To say that wages are but "a very small part of the cost of production" is quite erroneous. The wages paid directly by some employers may be small, but the wages cost in materials and services used by that employer must also be reckoned. The former must pay not only the wages of the farm labourer, but, indirectly, the wages of the man who makes his roads, the man who works in the fertiliser factory, the man who makes his butter and cheese, and the man who handles it on railway, wharf, and steamer. The surest way to bring

in the "coolie standard of living" which the Seamen's Union is so anxious to fight is to insist that nominal wages shall be maintained at a fictitious level so that opportunities of employment are reduced. The nominal wages may be kept high, but of what uiie is that if employers cannot pay them? As to the repudiation of the war debt, even the Seamen's Union should be capable of realising that such a step could not stop there. Repudiation of one debt would mean repudiation of all. The chief sufferers by such action would not be some few financial magnates in London, but the working people of New Zealand who have placed I their savings in banks, insurance companies, and other forms of investment. The Labour Prime Minister of Australia knows this. He said in London that almost all Australians were interested in local loans. But the Federated Seamen's Union still believes that the capitalist and the worker are two distinct persons, and the worker can hit the capitalist without injuring himself.