"VALUE OF THRIFT"

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 89, 12 October 1937, Page 8

"VALUE OF THRIFT"

(To tne Editor.) Sir, —I wrote you recently challenging the new notion which the Prime Minister and his colleagues have sprung upon the country, namely, that further individual saving should be discouraged as useless. Mr. G. H. Wilkin has written in reply with an argument in favour of "New Credit" from the Reserve Bank whenever money is wanted. He refers to "Germany during the inflation period," and says that after the Great War there was "such a colossal sum of savings on loan" that Germany "let loose" the paper mark and so made the savings of no value.

Now, that is precisely what things will come to in this country if we do not put a stop to this "public credit" panacea and other false nostrums which are feeing urged on us by the Labour Party. All the wise saving which has been done in the past by some hundreds of thousands of working people who have put money aside in the Post Office "Savings" Bank, the Government Life Insurance, and other similar institutions, will be inflated away as the German private savings were inflated out of existence aiter the war.

My letter stressed the advantages to be gained by wise individual saving, and if any support were wanted, from the Labour Party itself might we not refer to these facts:—

1. That the big industrial unions have large sums stored away for use in case of emergency.

2. That the union dues which girls in factories and men on Public Works are now compelled to pay for the privilege of belonging to unions (the meetings of which they never attend) are being "saved" by officials for political or industrial purposes. 3. That many of the Labour M.P.s themselves (including members of the Cabinet) are reported to have private assets which they have acquired by saving out of their salaries and honoraria, etc.

Why do Labour's own representatives and officials save privately when they argue in favour of spending? It is a very poor outlook for this fair Dominion if the argument of the Labour Party on Savings is as revealed by Mr. Wilkin—don't try to save any more became the Government can issue credit as it did in Germany, till your savings are worthless.—l am, etc., W.A.THOMSON.