CONTROL OF PEOPLE.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVI, Issue 308, 27 November 1936, Page 5

CONTROL OF PEOPLE.

THE COMMONSENSE VIEW. Control of credit—control of currencs' —control of prices—control of raw material —control of agriculture to put prices up—control of industry to put prices down—and presently control of everything—a planned society. That is the progress a lot of people have in the back of their minds, writes an American correspondent. 111 other words, nobody can he trusted. manufacturers, merchants, bankers, railroads, builders —everybody is out to fleece everybody else, and will do so if not “controlled,” Controlled by whom? By “experts.” What is an expert? A man of many books and no experience, generally. Sometimes a man who never had any capital and never hired any labour, but is anxious for a Government job, regulating what somebody else has produced.

Society cannot exist without some degree of control, granted. The question is, how much? When a man says, “Of course, the Government ought to control the credit of the country rather than the hankers,” the answer is that there is no “of course” about it. It is entirely a question of advantages and disadvantages in which a pound of experience is worth a ton of theory. When another says. “Of course, I have a right to sell the public any kind of securities they will buy,” there is no “of course” about that either.

Everything in our national life is related to everything else. You reduce the interest rate to benefit one group, but you have benefited another group you did not wish to benefit and have

injured some poople whom you overlooked. A group decides to reduce its working hours and raise its wages, only to find that there is less work than before. The Ontario Marketing Board raises the price of beans to help the farmer; result, loss of sales, “bootleg beans,” unsold stocks, farmer worse off than before. Every commodity and vocation is in competition with every other commodity and vocation. The housewife omits the weekly roast of beef for a permanent wave, her husband drives the old car in order to buy shares, while Mary passes up the movies for a new perfume. The diversity of types and temperaments in human nature, the variables in all human relationships, the unfvacenble complexity of modern life, make any system of “control mechanisms” absolutely impossible, short of the totalitarian Stat-i, which is despotism and slavery. Individual freedom should be restricted only in those matters on which consent would be practically unanimous. Religion?—Tvo! Protection, of persons and property ?—Yes! Invasions ?—Yes I Coining money?—Yes 1 Borrowing and lending?—No! The price of beans?— No! How are we going to overcome the evils of the day? Just as we have overcome even greater evils in tho past public_ opinion—steady growth and goodwill and co-operation between all classes—the growing realisation of mutual interests, the sense of brotherhood.

A slow process because human nature is stubborn—but legislation must follow, not precede, public opinion.