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Poverty Bay Herald, Volume VI, Issue 872, 25 August 1879, Page 2

There is very much declamation, principally of a stump oratory order, going on through both islands anent the subject of capital and labor. Now, there is no country where it woidd be more difficult to discriminate between capital and labor than New Zealand. We ask up to what point is accumulation a virtue, and to what degree must it rise before it becomes a crime. Who is a capitalist, and who is not ? Where is the line of 'demarcation to be drawn ? Is A. 8., who earns three pounds a week, and who pays ten shillings or a pound a month into a building society, an exemplary person ; and is C. D., who has an income of £3,000 a year, and annually re-invests one-third of the money, a wicked reprobate; Or are they both valuable members of the community? A. Bs monthly savings are immediately loaned out to borrowers who want to buy or build with the money, and they are thus absorbed m the wage fund of the colony. But what becomes of C. D.'s periodical accumulations 1 Whensoever they may be deposited, whether m a bank, or a joint-stock association, or m a business enterprise, they never lie idle for a single day. They are immediately put into circulation. Possibly they form part of the overdraft by which the manufacturer enlarges his buildings and extends his business ; or the farmer ire enabled to meet his outgoings until harvest, comes round ; or the builds woolsheds, and increases the productiveness of his run. Possibly they are lent to contradtors, companies, or shipbuilders, etc., etc. ; but m any and every case, we shall find them setting labour m motion. Capital is, m short, its indispensable ally, and its best friend ; and it can be obtained on the cheapest terms wherever the institutions of the country are administered by statesmen who legislate and govern for the good of all classes, and not for that of any- one section of the community which is supposed to possess an interest distinct from the welfare of the whole.