LAND AND CREDIT ISSUES

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 125, 22 November 1935, Page 16

LAND AND CREDIT ISSUES

(To the Editor.)

Sir, —A contributor, Mr. Tucker, takes Mr. Downie Stewart to task for his adherence to orthodox finance. Mr. Tucker writes on behalf of a party, rightly challenging, in my opinion, the administration of a Government which by its sectional legislation has brought great loss to most, and extreme hardship to very many of our citizens. But instead of manfully facing the facts of land speculation, trade restrictions, and crushing, biased taxation, accepting these evils as sufficient grounds for the Country's plight, and to then frame a policy fervently opposed to them, the Labour Party evades the real issues by its adoption of a form of social credit, although through past tamperings with the currency, our money system is far from perfect. The remedy is certainly not in the direc-| tion advocated by the Labour Party, j but lies, instead, in the resumption of the gold standard and the restora-' 1 tion of honest money. Mr. Tucker writes of the "failure to provide the purchasing power, or the money to buy and consume the goods," but industry ! always does provide sufficient purchasing power to buy the goods produced. Speculative rents, and over-taxed I goods, however, provide good reasons for subsequent disparities. Under the present system ol private land-owner-ship, with its inescapable land-specu-lation, no amount of increase in the money supply will do other than increase pro rata the present disposition of money. Except for the mischief caused by the dislocation, the relative situation is unaltered. The essential thing in wages is not so many pounds a week, but a just share of the products of labour. So long as huge amounts of these products are absorbed by non-producers, through the medium of unearned increments in land rent, excess tariff profits, or uneconomic Government expenditure, it is folly to expect mere monejt manipulations to rectify existing abuses. Writing, not to excuse the Government, but as a citizen concerned for the common welfare, I protest against the Labour Party's evasion in failing to make a frontal attack on transparent social wrongs, concerning themselves instead with sham remedies for sham evils in their haste for power.: I am, etc.,

R. A. GOSSE.