"The Everlastin' Teamwork of Every Bloomin' Soul."

Otago Witness, Issue 3415, 29 August 1919, Page 42

"The Everlastin' Teamwork of Every Bloomin' Soul."

BT WON THE WAR—IT WILL BRING PROSPERITY. Extracts from article by George E. Roberts, of The National City Bank in American Magazine last February.

"If we can get rid of the vicious doctrine that there must be conflict between Capital and Labour, we ought not to find any insurmountable difficulties in our path. That idea is a false one, and must be recognised as- such by both sides. Their interests are absolutely mutual, and if they work together on this plane both of them wilL-benefit. "We have shown what we can do if we all pull together. If we work with the same zeal, energy, unity of spirit, and use all the productive forces of the country as effectively in supplying the ordinary wants of the people as we have worked in carrying on the war, it will be possible to accomplish all that has ever been hoped for in improving social conditions. And when we say social conditions, we might as well say business conditions, for that is really what it amounts to. Social conditions depend on business in its broad sense; for business is what feeds and clothes us, educates our children, pays our doctors' 'bills, takes us to the theatre or the "movies," keeps our churches open, and makes life what it is. "I believe in labour being well paid. We have always had the highest wage scale in the world, and we want it to be always the highest in the world. But we have learned one thing of importance. It is that the vital point abou,t wages is not the rate per day or per week, but.the rate per unit of productibn. That is the key to the industrial problem. Efficient labour is worth high wages. the man who demands high wages, without giving efficient production in return, injures himself and is unfaithful to the wage-earning masser,. He adds to the cost of the necessaries and comforts which his fellows must buy. ...

"Suppose he is making hardware. If he gets high wages for poor work he increases the cost of hardware. The result is that the man who is working in the cottop mill in Massachusetts will have to pay more for his stove or his tin pans, or whatever ho buys in that line. The cost of cotton goods then goes up, and the original man, the hardware worker, has to pay more for his shirt, his underclothes, all the cotton things he buys for his. family "This' is not a question of class interests, but of obligations between people in the same walks of life. "As for the employer, it is to his interest that employees as a class shall bo well paid. TKe higher their purchasing power the better it is for business in general. We have got to get this into our heads as a people : that we are not independent of one another; that the honest prosperity of each one is beneficial to the rest of us. That is the secret of prosperity—mutual interest, cooperation. Efficient well paid workers, we must have. But they must realize their obligation to be efficient as well as their desiro to be well paid. And the employer must rinderstand that a vast body of workers with » great purchasing power forms the true foundation of prosperity. "We are all in this business of peace just as we were all in this business of war. The way. to win it is to work together and to work individually just as efficiently as possible. "To the extent we realize this fact, that we are all dependent on one another for prosperity, to just that extent are we likely to have prosperity." LET'S GO!