CORRESPONDENCE

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 126, 23 November 1935, Page 13

CORRESPONDENCE

POLITICAL CONTROL OF

BANKING

(To the Editor.)

Sir,—The Labour Party has now definitely declared that if elected to the Treasury benches they will take control of credit currency and banking; and being no fools they know that when they have that control they can crush all opposition. Of the financial dangers attendant on political control of banking and currency much has already been written. In the matter of the State taking v over our banking much can be written gi of the injustice and wrongs that will I # be inflicted upon shareholders and de- .. positors alike. The Labour Party states that by doing so they will re- tl store freedom to the mass of the ii people, but that statement is nothing more than a delusion. If the people give such powers to any political party c they sell their freedom for a veritable h "mess of pottage." i Assuming the State does obtain control of our banking system, the effect ° will be that every bank manager and n bank clerk will be a civil servant a under complete control of the party in f power, and such a state of affairs would absolutely destroy the freedom of every M person who required to. ido business with the bank. If an individual, firm, "v or company dared adopt an antagonis- i tic attitude towards any State Depart- t ment or. the Government would it i not very quickly find that its credit E at the bank was restricted? A bank ( manager has a more intimate know- -^ ledge of his customers' affairs than any 3 other person in the community, which ( | under our present system are kept ab- ( 1 solutely private and confidential. Under a State-owned banking system would 1 1 j all this information be available to the I r party in power? ' In fact the ultimate result would be c . that every individual would be disci- ( I plined as every trade unionist today ; is disciplined. One party in the State ; ' would usurp power and suppress its J opponents. ; 1\ may be said that the above state- • I ment is fantastic, and could not exist 1 in this country, but Mr. Munro has re- ( cently said as much. Such a state of ; . affairs practically exists today in Germany, and I have yet to learn that the [ Germans are inferior in any way to the people of New Zealand in educal tion, intellect, or strength of character. ~ We have a system of banking cur- \ rency and commerce which has taken ' centuries to evolve and build up, and , the Labour Party with its policy of ! State banking and guaranteed prices asks us to hand it over to them, a [^ party that has not one member who s has intimate practical knowledge of that system, a system upon which.the a very life-blood of the people of this country is dependent. There is an old J saying that an artist' may take years " to paint a masterpiece, but a fool can put his foot through it in one second. General the fet. Hon. J. C. Smuts has ably expressed the danger that lies before us in the following words: — "Individual freedom, individual independence, individual-participation in the difficult work of government seems to me essential to all true progress. Yet today the individual seems more and more at a discount in the new experiments in government which are ber ing tried out. The sturdy individualism .v which inspired progress in the past, Li which has created our best human s values, seems to be decaying in the |l atmosphere of confusion. Freedom of ,j conscience, of speech, of the Press, of [y thought, and teaching is in extreme __ danger.". . ,j We have already had too much Gov^ v ernment interference in business. Let. f' us-^see to'it while we may that we call a halt to that interference and '" that henceforth our slogan shall be T that of the old Scottish Covenanters: i "We fight not for glory, nor for wealth, nor for honour, but for that freedom which no good man will surrender but with his life.'I—l1 —I am, etc.,. BRITISH BORN.