TO ABOLISH INVESTMENTS.

Evening Star, Issue 22032, 18 May 1935, Page 19

TO ABOLISH INVESTMENTS.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir,— Being totally unable to attend the pictures and vaudeville owing to the financial stringency prevailing, 1 owe a debt of gratitude to the Welfare League for its free present of A Comedy of Error,’ which is periodically supplied in your columns. 1 would like to know where the 15,000,000 of the working class in Britain got the money to invest. Being brought up north of the Tweed I think I know more of the conditions than the league. As the total adult working population is just about that figure, and of that lot no work can be found for two millions, I am up against something harder than “Pons Asinorum ” to under-* stand. Does the league not know that the average wage for a labourer was 18s, and for a tradesman 35s to 36s a week of 54 hours up to 1914, and pro rata to the cost of living to-day is no better? The league says: ‘ It (the Socialist Party) will take their right to invest their savings as they think fit.” The capitalist State does that now; it won’t allow one to put as much as one likes in either savings bank or Post Office hank. Is the league so unpatriotic as to think that the ■Socialist State (that is, all the people) is inferior'mentally or morally to Whittaker . Wright, Samuel Insull, Ivar Kreuger, Mr Stavisky, the pepper plutocrats, Mr Hatry, or Ernest Terah Hooley, who spent other people’s savings on a golden communion set for St. Paul’s Cathedral, and who later had this to say about the schemes he promoted: “I floated them, got what I could out of them, and let someone else nurse the baby.” I should like to point out to the Welfare League that every one of these gentlemen was accepted as a sound financier till he was found out. Not one of them had any pretensions to socialism; all were convinced individualists, and believed in their inalienable right to exploit their neighbour. In this list I have left out many more that I might have named, including one very patriotic gentleman who has gone down in history as (Hotairio) Bottomley. Somehow, after reading the league’s article, my mind goes back to thirty years ago when in a Glasgow pantomime I heard a famous comedian sing a song popular at that time. It was entitled f You can’t diddle nne; oh no, you can’t diddle me.’ —I am, etc., PorOFFSKI. May 18. ■