LABOUR AND CAPITAL.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 14947, 21 March 1912, Page 4

LABOUR AND CAPITAL.

Sir, —I notice in nearly every letter which appears in your columns from Socialistic writers that these gentlemen claim that the workers of New Zealand get one-third of the profit, of their labour and tlio employers or shareholders got tho remaining twothirds. I have asked several members of the New Zealand Socialist party how they arrived at these figures, and in no case have I received a straightforward or satisfactory reply. I have, therefore, been looking up the profits made by the most prosperous concerns in the Auckland province (by most prosperous I mean the concerns which pay the largest profits in proportion to the capital invested), and the following is the result:—Tho proportion paid by these concerns in a most prosperous year show that five-sixths of the profits go to the worker as wages and one-sixth to the owners; but if we, instead of taking the ten or so most prosperous concerns, take the twenty next best, what do we find? That tho profits are even better for the workers, as they take no less than seven-eighths, and whilst the owners take one-eighth. iNot oven in its most prosperous days could tho Waihi mine pay two-thirds of the profits to the shareholders even on the original £1 shares, and remember the average life of a gold mine is under 12 years. Puzzled. 0