NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20172, 5 February 1929, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

RECKLESS SPECULATION. "When it comes down to actual investment the public arc too much like sheep. They see the reports that profits are being made iD some specific undertaking, and if a rival comes into the field they think it also must achieve equal success at once," said Sir Edwin Stockton, in a recent speech in England. "Booms are invariably disastrous to any industry in which they occur, and I am sorry to say that there is a good deal of justice in the assertion that shares in many concerns are bought very recklessly, often on the strength of extremely doubtful estimates of profits to come. Many of these estimates may be genuine enough, but the difficulties encountered in trying to establish new industries aro often overpowering. Probably a large number of the people who buy speculative shares did not know anything about them or did not really believe that the price they paid was justified. They bought becauso they believed that the boom would carry quotations up still further and give them a profit. How, then, can this tendency of rash and wasteful speculation bo curbed ? Not by any State action—in that way lies disaster. It is by education, by plain spcakiug of public men, and by the common action of all persons who have at heart the financial wellbeing of the country." THE BEST MINDS. "The whole modern trend in industrialism is toward higher and more efficient organisation in which tho relative number of superior intelligences must steadily dwindle," says Professor W. B. Pitkin, of Columbia University, New York, in a book cutitled "The Twilight of the American Mind." He states that in the Ford organisation 95 per cent, of all workers are taught in a single day how to run their machines and handle tools; about 5 per cent, are skilled craftsmen; and there are a dozen or fifteen "best minds" to manage 150,000 workers. "This is the inevitable trend in business and industry. For what organisation of man-power can do in one field it can do, with minor variations, in most other fields. Genius may devise the first organisation that accomplishes these miracles; but any mediocre mind with plenty of energy and cash at its disposal can copy tho structure and procedure of the original scheme and, with considerable success, apply it to almost anything. ... As education becomes more scientific and teachers more competent, a steadily increasing number of people will be trained up to tho limit of their native capacities. They will bo able to perform mental tasks which now, under an imperfect educational technique, have to bo handled by people of much higher native intelligence who rely on their own wits rather than on special training. In tho long run, then, the range of opportunities for the 'best minds' will bo narrowed still further by the upward training of the second, third, fourth and fifth best minds." THE PEOPLE AND PEACE. "International organisation is a necessity of modem times, and tho Leaguo of Nations is the only organisation of the kind in being. Granted that it is far from perfect, it would bo madness to discard it Its creation was a step in tho right direction. Our business is to carry on tho advance," says Viscount Cecil, in tho preface to a collection of his lectures and addresses on tho subject. "The League is not an end in itself. It exists to make effective tho will to peace of tho peoples of the world. Unless there is that will to peace tho League has no reason for its existence. That is why it is rightly said to bo based on public opinion. Tho Covenant with its reiterated insistenco on publicity bears witness to tho same truth., Without public opinion tho League can do nothing. If the peoples want war, no Leaguo will permanently prevent them from resorting to it. That is why the education of public opinion is of such vast importance and why thero is such an urgent call to promoto tho activities of the League of Nations Union and kindred societies. Further, it is well to remember that public opinion is one. Tho will to peace is one. It is foolish for a man to preach international peaco and to advocate industrial war. Tho arguments against war aro no loss powerful in tho case of classes than of nations. Tho substituting of force for reasou is just as objectionable in one case as in tho other, and an acceptance of it as the arbiter of industrial disputes will add to the difficulties of its elimination in the international sphere.