“THE PROFIT MOTIVE”

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 76, 13 October 1941, Page 6

“THE PROFIT MOTIVE”

ITS CONTRIBUTION TO PROGRESS j The Individual Bookshop, Ltd., is' publishing an interesting series of sixpenny booklets on “Post-War Questions.” The following quotation from “The Protit Motive,” written by Sir j Ernest Benn, is of interest. He writes: "The public has never demanded in ; advance of supply all the multifarious amenities which together make up, civilisation and which it now enjoys. I "To come to modern times, it 1 will be within the recollection of some of my readers that an endeavour was made to popularise two ideas at the same time, the one roller-skating and the other the moving pictures. Capital j and labour plumped for roller-skating. Palaces for the practice of the sport were erected by the thousand, and the moving picture was neglected. Stock Exchange flotations for roller-skating I enterprises developed into a minor' boom at the time when the Palace j | Theatre was the only concern to be ; ! found willing to experiment with the : j moving picture. j "The experience here was exactly [ i my experience in the publishing trade. 1 The good and the inferior were both supplied, the inferior had all the experts to recommend it, but the public judgment, not the first judgment, : working gradually through the sense! and intelligence of the individual, has j left roller-skating on the scrap heap j and has brought the moving picture to I its present state of perfection. “Where would the internal combus- j tion engine and aviation be to-day had , it not been for the profit system? The Codys, the Wrights and the Rolls were all regarded as cranks. . . . “But one of the greatest of profit owners in our time, the late Lord Wakefield, took another view, and j spent a large proportion of his lor- i tune, a fortune made entirely out of i economy in oil, to pay the expenses i of the Malcolm Campbells and the ! Amy Johnsons to whom belongs the credit for the present state of de- i velopment in these matters. “Here again it is contrary to fact ; to say that the State or the Ministry o? Aircraft Production could or would have done the same thing, j In 1913 when Bleriot first crossed the ; Straits of Dover, no politician would j have had the courage to suggest the allocation of public money to be spent on what everybody regarded as game, j