Grey River Argus MONDAY, December 17, 1928. BRITAIN’S ELECTION ISSUE.

Grey River Argus, 17 December 1928, Page 4

Grey River Argus MONDAY, December 17, 1928. BRITAIN’S ELECTION ISSUE.

Scarcely does it show foresight in tlic Conservative Government to appeal, as they now do, to the public of Britain for half a million sterling towards feeding and clothing the unemployed. It is not surprising that such things should be raising the question of whether the present Administration will not meet defeat at the General Elections in the coming year. It ought to warn other parts of the Empire against a social system which has reached this climax, that a million sterling, half of it voluntary charity, and the remainder a State subsidy, should be requested this Christmas to find merely food, boots, and clothes for those lacking in such bare necessities, if so much poverty existed in a socalled backward country, while it might be vaunted as a fault, it might not be so incongruous as it is in one where wealth abounds in certain hands so much as to give a record per capita average. The question is what can be the rc- ; medy. Exile for the poor is no ■ more than a blunt refusal to face : the issue. The root of the evil : is the denial of distributive jus- . tire. The cure is beyond the pow:er of the individual. It is the ■ task of th<' State. A Government ■ call for private charity, while it : may work immediate relief, is, in i the final analysis, a shirking of : the real task. The masses, iuclu- ■ <ling the newly enfranchised wo- ■ men, would need little familiarity • with politics to see this. lienee : the. present pretences of Conser- : vative Ministers and millionaires. : by a show of wagering, that the : Government is not afraid of de- : feat. Labour will go to the polls : with a policy that squarely faces the problem of chronic poverty and pauperism, a policy of distributive justice, on which it should be able to rely confidently for a record vote, if not a majority’ in Parliament. Basie proposals' in that policy have recently been set out by one of the leading economists in the Party, Air Philip Snowden, including a plan Io inaugurate corporations owned by the public, and controlled in the public interest by the best business brains and capacities to be commanded. It is not a plan to nationalise the commercial banks, although it comprehends important gradual changes in that direction, such as Hie control of the Bank of England as a public corporation; extended banking facilities for people -with small means by spreading municipal and cooperative banks throughout the country; the regulation of gold value bv international agreement, under the 1922 Genoa Conference plan; and such changes in the banking and financial system as will secure that the available supply of credit and savings shall be used for enterprises of national advantage, as distinct from those that arc useless or socially injurious. The State needs more revenue, not merely to meet unemployment, but for public enterprises, which Labour -would raise chiefly from realisable profits. large incomes, accumulated wealth, and other 'sources that are socially created. The earned incomes -would not be any more taxed than they now are: but, by means of the surtax, differentiating between earned and unearned incomes, the revenue could be secured -without any new tax at all. The. death duties, however, afford a sure channel of much additional revenue, and there would be nobody the worse thereby except the class of rich idlers. Labour has no idea of doing away with alternative sources of credit for those engaged in business, but it is out to end the monopolistic system under which the richest are those whose wealth is nol earned, but is created by the community. and maintained by the community, flow far it will be. possible to go in the near future towards the realisation of Socialism in Britain may be uncertain, but that llie great majority of the people, who now are practically divorced from property , and wealth, and also from the sense of ownership, by more than one generation proletarian in status, will inevitably sanction an instalment of public enterprise as an alternative to the bar now imposed on private enterprise itself by monopoly. This eventuality the biggest monopolists and their political friends may pretend to ignore, or to consider a possibility fit only to be the subject of a wager; but they know quite well it. is a strong probability of the not distant future.