CAPITAL AND LABOR.

Evening Star, Issue 14053, 7 May 1909, Page 4

CAPITAL AND LABOR.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir,—Your reply to mv letter re the -above has not helped me very much. You certainly elaborated on your test, but .you did not make the matter any clearer to .my vision. Perhaps that is my misfortune not your famt. I have been brought up m a school which has taught me something slightly different to the doctrine preached by you, and that must be my escnse for again trespassing on your space. _ You assert that capital is the fruit ot self-denial, or, to put> it in your own words; “If men did not save there would be no capital, and if there were no capital nobody would be able to employ anybody.” J I asked for an elalsration of this lest and you replied with another, as follows • T" men cease to practise virtue, raiidence, self-denial, and thrift, there must of necessity come a time when the community would find themselves out of v-o'-k —standing in the market-place all the dev and no man hiring them.” Now, sir. it appears to me that if all men ceased to practise those virtues, instead of there being no work for them to do there weald be considerably more. If, on the ether hand, all men practised thrift, there ".void bo considerably mors men looking for work and less work for them to do° For instance, suppose every person decided to become thrifty, and in order to carry out this virtue they determined that in future they would go barefooted and bareheaded, there v, ould 1 ery soon be a large number of bootmakers and hatters in the market looking for work, and no one to employ them Or suppose the people of Dunedin deemed to go to bed before dusk in order to save firing and light, would ihat not throw hundreds out of work? Numerous other cases could be quoted to show the effect of thriit, but those mentioned should be sufficient to show where your doctrine, if put into practice, would land us. Then, again, if everybody saved, and had capital, of what use would ■it be if they could not find anyone to work for them? To my mind, capital would be of no use whatever. Brown would .ot work for Jones nor Jones for jßrown, corsequently if Brown and Jones wished to live they would require to work, r .nd when they did work they would get 1 lie full result of their labor and no more certainly not the labor of otners. In conclusion, permit me to add that in my opinion it is impossible to draw the lane between the use and abuse of capital According to your -contention, capital is useful so long as it is not abused, but yto. a to say when it is being abused? If a thing is good, one cannot have too much _of it; but apparently too much capital is not good. To sum up, capital is a virtue until it is abnsed, and then it is a nee or a virtue gone astray. If a man must save before he can get 'capital, then he mnst work before he can save; consequently capital is not absolutely necessary but work is. A man must work before he can save, and he must save before he can have capital. That is clearly your doctrine, and no matter how much it is elaborated on its meaning is the same. If ■ capital is necessary before a man can 'work, then where in the first place did' ithis capital come from. Did it grow like Topsy, or was it created? It seems to .me to be as great a puzzle as the hen ; and the egg. _ .There must first be a hen 'before there is an egg, and there mnst be an egg before there is a hen. Which was first? I am, etc., R. Beeen. May 6.