FOREIGN TRADE COMPETITION.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19476, 11 May 1925, Page 7

FOREIGN TRADE COMPETITION.

TO THE EDITOR. Sib, —Regarded as a reply to mine in last Saturday's Daily Times, Mr Childs's letter in your issue of to-day is a very interesting illustration of that strange mentality whicn finds satisfaction in evading categorical questions by indulging in a diatribe against people disliked and for whom there is little sympathy. My object in writing was purely humanitarian, and I am still hopeful of being informed on the points I raised. Meantime, however, f would ask Mr Childs if it is not as far from tho truth to. say that "Trade Unions at Home are but reactionary hotbeds run by the extremists of thn extreme" as to aver that Employers' Federations are nothing but modem star chambers run by cruel tyrants. Such statements would he the sheerest nonsense for there are very fine men in trade unions, and equally good mem in employers' federations. Indeed, those who have the hisrhpst interests of the community at heart believe that the best men in both camps will yet come together and find a way out of what seems to be at present a most unfortunate impasse. There is just a =ii";a;psr.ion nf irrirn humour in the touching little parable of the sled ere parry and th* wolves. The wolves are the Socialists. Ini«. of course, must be tnken a-4 axiomatic unless po'-t mortems prove them something different. But surely it i= not k'ndlv to compare "capital, the r>ossessors ; ' wit-h n sledge driver who would pass out his wife, to n wrOf rather tfnn first offer himself to the wolf. My experience of "the possessors" does not make me think of tKpn as men like that. They, too, are victims of n frrnni competitive pvsWn <>nd perhaps some d-iv tbrre will be «-vob-ed a social svstem in which thev will find a frfp-r o"tlet for much of the : r latent rroodv.ill which meantime must he supr»ros=orl.— I nm, pK, -V'm. W MacAutkuii. The Manse.. Pukcbiki, May 7.