CAUSES AND CURES

Evening Post, Volume CXIV, Issue 28, 2 August 1932, Page 6

CAUSES AND CURES

"It is not very difficult to-assent to the major portion of • Mr, .E. Earle Vaile's I statements, as to-tho 'causes which brought about -the: present depression: (writes Mr. K. A. Gosse). Obstructions and interference^with trade, far too much credit, heavy borrowing and wasteful expenditure resulting in crushing taxation, and, above all, an unenlightened electorate assenting easily to, or even demanding political nostrums to their own detriment; 'these are his chief indictments of the happenings bringing in their train the present depression: But in delivering Ins indictment Mr. Vaile has erred, in my opinion, in several minor points, chiefly in apportioning the blame for our troubles."

Mr. Gosso holds that it is the selfish unwisdom of the few that is mainly responsible for-,,the. trouble. "The landowners Mr. Yailo- seeks to apologise for and absolve from all share in the slump. He pictures the poor landowner-as being

compelled to submit to the frequent 'borrow, boom, and bust' policies of the past; The poor mortgagees, also, unwittingly, overlooked that their investments came third in. the order: of security. This explanation is grossly absurd. Landowning Governments have had almost continuous pow er, \which they have used in boosting up the values of land with borrowed money. The payment of interest on the borrowed money, Instead of being borne by the lands benefited and forming a first mortgage, ha? been transferred to the Customs to be paid by the unwise many."

Mr. Gosse also disputes Mr. Vaile's reasoning in assigning . part of the trouble to machinery and the limitation of the family. He proceeds: "While Mr. Vaile's outline of the.maih causes of the slump is moderately correct, his remedies for the cure of it are hopelessly inader quato. Speculative and' over-mortgaged land values, together with onerous. taxation on trade and industry, are the main causes of depression. His remedy is not the reversal of this policy: the removal of taxes from trade and industry, and the resumption of the economic ground rent for our revenue, but the reduction of wages to 8s per day, making it impossible for the average man to. pay the rent of house or buy sufficiently to enable prices to be maintained, and the clearing out of our cities of thousands of people,_thus rendering valueless millions ,of pounds worth of-improvements built for their use, and' enormously restricting the business upon which many other of our "citizens depend.. It is on the remuneration'of labour that' Mr. Vaile's loeic' most hopelessly breaks down. . 'The fixing of prices (whether of wages,.rent, interest/or commodities) is absolutely beyond the pow.ers of Parliament,' he rightly insists, yet goes on to accuse the Arbitration Court of unduly raising wages, or of doing the impossible.. He trie6 to set the unemployed worker against the worker still- employed by accusing the latter of. robbing the wages fund (an exploded fallacy) to the detriment of the former. If Jlr. Vaile's suggestion is adopted and the wages* of the worker still in rational" employment be approximated to that'of the relief worker, then nothing can prevent an. approximation of the value of their output also." ■ . .;,■■.-. . :