ONLY ONE BOSS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22412, 7 May 1936, Page 15

ONLY ONE BOSS

Sir, —The policy of the Government is clear. There is to be only one Boss — the Minister representing the State. Workers, down to girls and boys, are to be conscripted into a union. The trade union officials who derive their powers under legislation will be deputybosses paid by compulsory contribution. Every primary producer is to hand over his produce at a price fixed by the State —in other words, his income is to be determined autocratically by his employer, the State, at such a figure as a Minister thinks sufficient. The Government, so one Minister says, is to be the only trader, in other words the importers will have to import only what the Minister permits—or go out of business. Citizens will only be able to purchase such articles as are allowed to lie imported. Tho Minister will decide, not the purchaser's requirements. This is pretty serious! Think of the hundred and one activities of trade, etc., of its complications which require years of experience before a man can set up in business. Yet this Government assumes that a Minister is such a genius that he can take over this complicated machine for which he has had no training, and run it more successfully with a Civil Service Department with still less experience! If it were not'so serious it would be comic. Tho present policy clearly means that outside a select circle of politicians, civil servants and trade union officers, we are all to be mere automata. Ajax.