TRADE DAMAGED

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 34, 10 February 1939, Page 12

TRADE DAMAGED

STATE INTERFERENCE

i "The less a Government has to dp jwith business the more likely is business to flourish," was a statement made by the chairman, Mr. Arthur Chamberlain, a cousin of the British Prime Minister, at the general meeting of Tube Investments, Limited, at Birmingham. If this course was followed, said Mr. Chamberlain, business would be better able to provide the taxation 'which the Government needed for carrying on its proper functions, such as the provision for defence, education, and social welfare. One of today's* troubles, said Mr. Chamberlain, was that rulers had attempted to usurp the functions of Providence and plan the people's lives and activities for them. The final test of good government was the standard of living of the people, and he asked if there was any Government among those which had largely taken upon themselves the prerogatives of Providence —the United States, Mexico, Italy, and Germany—that had been able to appreciate the standard of living by taking over the direction of trade and agriculture. Mr. Chamberlain also asked whether it could be said that Britain's coal and steel trades were in better shape relatively to their foreign competitors since the Government had given them its help and advice. "Efforts to make countries entirely self-supporting; to bolster up trades by adjusting prices so that the weakest member of a group can pay his wages; to restrict the output of the efficient who could employ more labour and sell at lower prices and so increase the productivity of all the rest of the country, seem to me like trying to make water run uphill," said Mr. Chamberlain. "I do not believe," he continued, "that there is any man or group of men who can foresee sufficiently accurately the ultimate results of their economic policies to make it other than very dangerous for them to attempt, by law and decree, to dictate just, what, how, and in what quantities their nationals shall undertake to produce either agricultural or industrial products."