“WHO GOES A-BORROWING GOES A-SORROWING.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVII, Issue 218, 29 August 1927, Page 9

“WHO GOES A-BORROWING GOES A-SORROWING.

(To the Editor.) Sir,—l heard Professor Murphy last evening and have read your report and also your leading article in to-night's “Tribune. 51 It seems to me that both your report and your leader omitted one of the most significant facts disclosed bv the professor; to wit that, per capita production is falling rapidly. Now. Sir. when we consider the fact that inventive genius and scientific research are constantly enlarging individual powers of production, the falling ratio of production is an extremely ominous matter. The original fountain of all production is the acquisitive instinct of the individual. Any device, or agency that enables individuals to acquire without producing is a double-acting destroyer of prosperity, because, on the one hand, the individual lacks incentive to develop his potential powers of production through having means of ministering to his acquisitive urge from the fruits of other men’s productive activity; and. upon the other hand, the despoiled producer has incentive to produce killed in him in exact ratio to the effective ness of the dispossessing powers. The long history, not to mention current accomplishments, of the human race, proves man’s ability to win sustenance from most unfnvouiable aspects of material nature and notwithstanding Professor Murphy’s extraordinary statement to the effect that New Zealand is almost the poorest country in the world from an agricultural point of view, present conditions and immediate prospects are a very definite indictment of our whole community management. Thi' should move qverv individual with the divine capacity for reasoning to agitate his mass of grey matter to the discerning of'his community responsibility, for the fulfilment of that responsibility is the one th!' ~ vpim which all prosperity depends —I am. etc., ARCH. LOWE. Hastings, 26/8/27.