LORD LEVERHULME AND LABOUR

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XLII, Issue XLII, 7 June 1923, Page 2

LORD LEVERHULME AND LABOUR

(To the Editor.) Sir,—l think I saw in the Star lately thao the Labour Party were to have' a bvs, meeting in Hawera soon. lam : not a. Labourite; 1 am a .Liberal and a* reo trader. 1 ma y say if the Labour j 1 arty were wise they would be free Lrauers too. Mr. Seddon, before- his ' end went to Australia with th-s objecb ' ol hampering the colony with more ' trade restriction. I would prefer to vote for Mr. Massey before Mr. Sed- *\ , t V le ?ivo y^u> for the bene- « ?l "«•? Labour Party, an article from iubhc Opinion on "Lord Leverhulme's Exploits." "Lord Leverhulme has ji.sua.lly something to say worth hearing, and a keen, vivid way of sayinoit, ' says the Sunday Times. "Hi" speech to the shareholders in the- hu«-e .enterprises he has created was full of Sootl points, but none more pertinent tli.'ui his sketch of himself as drawn by t'ae anti-oapitalist agitator. Here i's a man who, by genius and industry, has built up businesses that employ over 40,000 people. Although he practises co-partnership, and gives those in lu.s _ service every chance-'of improving t^ieir position, he is none the less a osood-sucker1 and a 'parasite.' But f.ord J.eves-hulme has a ready retort he confesses to the.crime of creating employment by developing new forms of wealth and production. _" He admits too. that he is always reidy with, the money on pay-day, and thai lie wishes every workman to be a capitalist. But

he disclaims the title of aii 'exploiter.' On the contrary, he charges that it is jhe who is being exploited; that though j 72 years old he still has to get up at j 4.30 every morning, and that the busi-

nesses he has founded have thrown upon him a burden that grows automatically with their growth. It is his brains and energy and power of direction that are really being exploited by the 40,000 people in his employment. And whatever the Labour agitator may say, the common sense of the average working man teils him that Lord Leverhulmo is right. As Lord Leverhulme showed in his speech last week, exploitation of labour means, in his case, rising at 4.30 a.m., working until late at night, discovering new processes, finding new markets, providing employment for 40,000 people, and/incidentally, taking great risks,'' says the Times. There are, unfortunately, too , few men who can do the- tilings that ' Lord Leverhulme and other great captains of industry have done. Without freedom for the activities of these, men of exceptional enterprise the economic : lot of the workpeople of this country would not be very dissimilar to that of the sorely distressed workers and peasants of Bolshevist Russia.—l am, etc , R. BURG ON,