SHORTER WORKING WEEK

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXX, 25 March 1936, Page 3

SHORTER WORKING WEEK

(To the Editor) Sir, —I again question the right of the Welfare League to challenge the Government’s policy of a shorter working weqk. New Zealand industry returned a Labour Government on the stregth of their reform programme and the League must how to the will of the majority. 1 do not know the personnel of the League blit as they do not labour, they should have the good grace not to interfere with what is not their concern. If they are interested in manufacture, and have a grievance, the Government have provided a remedy and they can apply for an exemption from the forty-hour week, and expect justice. The present Government have given more study, and have more knowledge of the subject, than the League who wish to ape as Iheir teachers. The items mentioned in the League’s contribution have already been left behind in the march of progress.

The League, your readers will have noted, did not accept my challenge to discuss distribution, buT cling to thenagitation for production. In your issue of Thursday last under the heading of “Problem of Distribution,” you publish a portion of the speech of Sir William Laft-ke, addressed to the British Electrical and Allied Industries Association. Sir William said that “The problems of production were solved and that attention must he given t.o the problems of effective distribution. Under the economic conditions in which every country in the world found itself to-day, the continuance of unrestricted competition, which was no other than the law of the jungle seemed to him to he a denial of intelligence.' 1 This is almost word for word, the argument I put- up to the League which they choose to ignore. I trust they will accept another's opinion that production is no longer a subject for debate.

The League contend a shorter working week cannot be adopted unless competitor countries follow suit otherwise we will lost our markets. It is this selfsame competition for foreign markets that is causing all the trouble. Each of these countries, like our own, has a potential market within its own borders but it cannot operate because the workers are too poor to purchase the wealth they themselves create. The imbecility of exporting the food tbe country herself is hungry for, requires some explanation. It has become a world-wide religion to do this and is a religious rite that exposure does not seem to abolish. The gold, food, wool and other riches that we export are our burnt offerings to “Sound Finance.” They are the gifts of man to “Mammon” to appease his voracious appetite. This ritual is known as “balancing the budget.” Every civilised country in the world has a “National Debt,” and to pay the interest on it (principal is never paid, but increases, because we borrow more money to meet our interest) —each country has to export more than it imports. Each must sell more to the other than it buys hack, which is the height of impossibility and the lowest form of intelligence. Take our own Dominion. In “The Mail” dated 20th March you give a list of imports and exports’ showing about nine millions excess of exports over imports, covering a period of only three months. On this average we are giving away 36 millions a year. The New Zealand Year Book proves this is about a correct estimate over the last ten years. This means that if we get rid of the borrowing habit as Mr Savage intends we shall, it would not take long before we got rid of the “debt system,”' so far as New Zealand is concerned. While on this topic let us look at Hie position of our neighbours across the Tasman. Against our three millions of debt, they have a National Debt of £1,200,000,000 and their interest, bill is about one million per week.. , In 1860 the national debt was twelve millions; to-day it is one hundred times more with a population of only four times as many. Since the Federation, Australia has paid 871 millions in interest and added a thousand million to the principal, lake ourselves, Australia must have exports. She must eternally give away the fruits of her people s toil to pay interest. I ask all outside of a mental institution, are exports any good to the people of New Zealand ? I exempt the Welfare League who favour more and more exports. On second thoughts, and judging the mentality of those who contribute so willingly to our overseas “Santa Glaus” fund, my query could perhaps be more correctly answered if I addressed it to the institutions referred to. Exports under the new system Mr Savage has promised to inaugurate will have a different interpretation. For all the millions of pounds worth of production we send overseas wo will receive in

return its equivalent in imports—(excluding our “so much a month” oft the old account which will eventually he wiped out and our money lenders with if) —because wo will have the power to purchase what is rightfully our own, These things are now nearing accomplishment, though those who have so long deluded us still call it a delusion. I have not made a very good job of disparaging the Welfare League this time through being engrossed with my own ideas, but I feel I can afford to he generous. In view of a brighter outlook, the transfer of man’s burden of toil to the machine. The prospects of the workers being granted their rightful access to the wealth they create, the following prophetic lines of Longfellow seem approaching fulfilment:— Ah ! If they fate with anguish fraught, Should be to wet the dusty soil With the hot burning tears of toil, To struggle with imperious thought, Until the over-burdened brain. Heavy with labour, faint with pain, Like a jarred pendulum, retain, Only Us emotion, not its power; . .Remember, in that perilous hour, When most afflicted and opprest, From labour there shall come forth rest. —I am. etc.. IKONA MALI. Nelson, 23rd .March.