STATE MARKETING

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23882, 9 August 1939, Page 5

STATE MARKETING

TO. THE EDITOB

Sir, —Mr J. E. MacManus • is a true representative of the Labour Party supporters. In his reply of Saturday he shows that he believes that the Coates-Forbes Government was responsible for the last world-wide depression. Above and bevohd this he still believes that had the Labour Party been in power all New Zealanders would have been' insulated against the repercussions of > collapsed markets abroad. Surely it is now quite obvious that Labour cannot insulate any section during a period of comparative buoyant markets. Bv what means therefore could it achieve this splendid national isolation in times of world-wide depression? Mr MacManus would have us believe that once we had become entangled in the oozy duicksands of Communism we are above all material or trade depressions. , , Mr MacManus asks me why chere was poverty in midst of plenty. Why did people live in hovels? etc. etc. Now. I know that Mr MacManus is itching to tell us that it was just because of some mythical monsters, these financial gangsters and footpads of whom Comrade J. A. Lee speaks so lovingly. My conception however of the wonders of finance and its ills is this: A piece of elastic and a steel firder both possess the property of elasticity In use this duality gives us the true value of the elastic and of the steel So long as we use them within their elastic limits all is well If however we load stretch or misuse them beyond thsir elastic limit this property of elasticiW (their true valued is lost Monev in the form of currency or credit has its use and its misuse. It. too. has its elasticity in the shape of credit and extended credit, but experience shows us that when we indulge in these Communistic experiments which are the sole hone of State marketing as costless credit and the

hundred and other senseless "everything for nothing" schemes of inexperience we ruin national credit.

Now, the senseless fool who. in his ignorance, misuses the elastic, the steel girder, or the money loses for himself the use of it. The Labour Party attained the Treasury by its ability to convince the public that the whole b'ame for all loss is attributable to the maker of the elastic, the steel girder and the banker or money-lender. Now, I cannot tell Mr MacManus why, individually or collectively, infants (both physical and mental) will persist in ruining every piece of elastic they can lay hands on, but we find reason for our national failings when we hear our Prime Minister claiming to be "only human." It is a poor consolation to those who laugh at the political poultices that are applied to remedy the bruises made by the boomerang legislation conceived by Socialistic dreamers.

Mr MacManus makes a very false claim when he states that the Labour Party is cleaning up the mess made by financial gangsters. It is stupid to believe that mess-creating is messcleaning up. Any disease in the world is preferable to the medicines of Cdmmunism, which are prescribed on the belief that it is much easier to destroy the patient than,to cure him. We do not. however, even'want to be.cured. —I am, etc., J. D.