ILL-CONSIDERED ECONOMY.

Evening Star, Issue 20989, 31 December 1931, Page 11

ILL-CONSIDERED ECONOMY.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —In to-night’s ‘ Star ’ you say: “ No one will contest tho fact that it is better for men to be employed by private employers than under the various schemes of local bodies or tho Government.” That is a very sweeping statement, and 1 think the inference you deduce open to question. However, it is not tho question whether it is better for men to work for private employers than to work for local bodies or for tho Government that I am concerned about, but the implied assumption you seemingly wish to draw from the concept—that employers should carry on their industrial activities even though economic and financial conditions rendered such activities unprofitable to them. I have always understood that ouo of the first responsibilities a wouldbe employer of other men took upon his shoulders—if an honest man—was to be financially able to pay his workmen their wages when duo. Employers of labour are out to make a profit‘out of tho labour of those whom they employ. There is no altruism about the employer of labour, whether such employer is ,a private person or a public company. Gain in some shape or form is tho primary object. Now, employers in scores of different industries have for years been struggling along from hand to mouth, barely making enough to pay wages and liquidate their own current expenses. In numerous instances the employer at tho end of tho month has found himself with less profit out of his undertaking than the weekly wage paid to his employees, while in many other instances he has had to borrow to pay his wages bill. Mr A. R. Galbraith, like yourself, would seem to be kindly, open-handed, and generous; but in reality tho advice and criticism _ yon tender would seem to lead in quite a number of cases towards the door of tho Bankruptcy Court. Your advice may bo kindly meant, but it comes too late in tho day. Your past policy of booming economic progress with borrowed capital, of putting up wages and salaries above their earning capacity, and your public mania of taxing the thrifty and industrious has practcally killed off tho private employer. You have clearly rendered the employer’s job not only unprofitable, but a very thankless one. Education has certainly taught the worker how to assess his or her wage-earning value, but _ it has burnt knowledge and wisdom into the brains of the small private employing class, and morn especially the women- 1 folk of Hedge ” on the land, who

have discovered that the “ job ” of provider and general cook and slushy for the hired man is merely a short track to an early grave. The motor car that gives employment and high wages to foreign workpeople, that drains the gold from the Bank of England vaults, has been found by the employing class a much more healthful and joyous way of getting rid of their surplus earnings than to spend the same enlarging their business or improving their land! . “ 111-considered economy,” is it that is troubling you. You need not worry about economy. Your systematic Government exploitation of the thrift and industry of the private worker in the interest of the State pensioners has just about killed such a foolish fetish of a past age. Now that washing-up time is with us and wo have reached the limit of our squandermania, in the hope of prolonging and continuing the boomill fr °” you, peril-.ps others also, would have the private employer beggar himself in the vain hope of holding on to his “ job ” of employer. You should have sized up the real state of the employers’ feelings long ere this—it has been well known that the j b of being a private employer had lost its one-time profit and glamour—not to be lightly taken up or willingly continued. Perhaps we have unconsciously drifted, but certainly the people of New Zealand have got adrift and have swung away from their one-time anchorage. We have been, for quite a long while, tramping along the corridor, overlooking the green fields of Socialism, and now that that goal is clearly in sight tho good people from one end of the State to the other, largely in mass, are frantically struggling to haul the Ship of State back to the old duck pond. Tho near approach of “ the Termiti Homo” has scared quite a large number, including even the Liberal editor of the ‘Star.’—l. am, etc., P. H.