CAPITAL AND LABOUR

New Zealand Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 11305, 2 September 1922, Page 10

CAPITAL AND LABOUR

PROFITS AND TAXATION. The Spanish Inquisition was defensible only on the hypothesis that./belief was wholly a-matter of volition (says “Engineering”). . Strong; arguments in favour of such a thesis might well be collected from the speeches of- labour leaders.' For example, Mr Smil!ie in an addreiss at Clydebank professed to bqlieve not merely the absurdity that the miners, engineers, and shipbuilders have in the recent disputes, been defeated by organised capital, but also in the super-absurdity that “the lock-out of the miners was not merely a question of the mine-owners locking out their own hands, hut a plot in which the members of the Government were engaged, and the-British industries were behind the plot.” Organised capital would, however, have nearly as much to gain as the workman by a continuance of the conditions; which held during the war. The nation then required certain goods at all costs, and those who supplied tnem demanded veiy high rates for their services. For each penny of exoess profits obtained by the capitalist, however, the workman took an .excess profit of sixpence or a shilling, and unlike the capitalist they were not mulcted some 60 per cent, to 80 per cent, of these exoess profits by special taxation. Thedefeats suffered by the miners and engineers’ unions have not been brought about by organised capital, but by the unorganised consumers, who had found themselves unable to pay the prices demanded and thus restricted their nurchases to the minimum. Most of us are worse off than before the war, and accept it as part of the price we have had. to pay for securing out right to live our own lives, free from Zabernism and Junkerism. It is only organised labour, and particularly that' part of it that did a' minimum' of the work at the front, which olaims that it should not he called upon to bear its share of the general burden. THE USE OF CAPITAL.

Mr Henry Gosling, speaking 1 on the same date, continues the same paper, was almost equally as funny as Mr Smillie. He oomplained that the big shipowners “had built new ships and bought new machinery.” The real trouble has. however, been a dearth of orders for new ships and machinery. When the war broke ont, we owed our salvation to the 20.000,000 tons of merchant shipping which had been built up because clever men had been able to make relatively high profits in the shipping trade. If they had not made these profits, neither ships nor machinery would have been constructed. Moreover, had the high profits been distributed to the men they employed they would for the most part have been dissipated. When a manufacturer makes a fortune be invests it in extensions to his works, thus providing well-paid employment for additional men. At pre-war prices each £2OO thus invested provided, on the average, wages for one more workman., C<w)pwa.tive societies, it is important to bear in mind, have never founded a new industry or effected any important improvement in methods of distribution. The general well-being of the country in normal times, has thus unquestionably been due to the much denounced capitalist.