SMALL CAPITALISTS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LVI, 21 July 1925, Page 10

SMALL CAPITALISTS

“We want for our people better education, better housing, and insurance against the worst hazards of life, and we want to see more widely diffused the possession and investment ut capital, and, above all, regular employment, which can be. achieved primarily only by the. unity of those who are most closely concerned, those who- organise and those who labour in the great industries, said Mr Baldwin recently in reviewing the policy cl Ins Government. He said its ami was not the Jest ruction of capital, hut the multiplication of capitalists. “The trouble with our country is not that we are too wealthy, for we are not. Jt is not that wealth is badly distributed, but that we do not yet produce enough to give to every family the standard of life which we should all desire, to see it enjoy. V oil can only attain that goal bv greater production and a more scientific use, both of material and human resources, by honest finance, and by a wide spread

habit of saving. . . . The doctrines preached to-day in regard to capitalism are misleading and mischievous, because capital is only our savings—savings of rich and poor alike. We cannot get on without it. Wo want as much as we can get, and we want it cheap. The denunciation capital as such is really in the long run in vain, because in the last half-century—through co-operative societies, through the savings banks and savings certificates —we have seen an enormous increase in the number of financial smallholders, and they are the greatest assets of the modern Stale.”