Coats-Off Attitude Is Today's Cure

Northern Advocate, 13 June 1947, Page 6

Coats-Off Attitude Is Today's Cure

(P.A.) WELLINGTON, This Day. "It is idle to think that the mere raising of wages and the creation of more and more money will cure the inpoverishment of people caught !*.i the aftermath of the greatest war in history,” said the general manager of the Bank of New Zealand (Mr P. L. Porter), at the annual smoke concert of the New Zealand Bank Officers’ Guild last night. Mr Porter continued with the simple parallel of a shipwrecked man reaching a desert island by clinging to a floating chest. If he had a choice he would pray that when opened the box would not be full of useless banknotes, rather that it would contain a spade or axe and some seeds.

"That was the position of the world today and its troubles in matters of housing and shortages of electricity and goods would be cured sooner by taking off coats and greater determination to work than by working less and expecting money to do the job instead.

"There is only one thing we can irrevocably waste,” said Mr Porter, "and that is time.

“A certain minimum of real work is necessary to maintain our living conditions, and it is a mere truism to say that in New Zealand, as hours worked by men have been reduced, so have the labours of our women been increased.