ON GUARD, SOCIALISTS!

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 17957, 8 December 1932, Page 11

ON GUARD, SOCIALISTS!

(To the Editor o( the Herald.j Sir, —J have been carefully studying the correspondence passing though your columns between the Public Trustee and various correspondents with reference to the Public Trust Office’s position. The critics appear to me to be, one and all, supporters of the crumbling capitalistic system, and it is a matter of regret that no persons imbued with the true ideals of a socialistic State have taken up the cudgels on behalf of the Public Trust Office, an institution conceived and operated on socialistic lines. Apart from the “pros and cons” of the matters under debate, 1 wish to show the public the worthy and desirable effect of (be. operations of the Public Trust Office. Tins office lias always rightly been a white-haired hoy of the rapidly growing Labor movement, and has assisted our cause in many ways, some of which are

1. It has progressed nobly in the socialisation o l ' law. accountancy, sharebroking, land agency, and a variety of other close corporations. 2. It has deprived the capitalistic hanking system of a large part of the people’s capital formerly lying in their coffers.

v. It is the thin edge of the wedge towards our ideal of a State banking

system. For what is to prevent a Labor Government, when in power, from taking over the capital funds under the control of the. Public Trustee, and with these moneys form the nucleus of a State hank.

4. The Public Trustee builds offices and lets these offices to tenants at reasonable rentals, so competing with the landlord classes. 5. He has practically assimilated the whole of the securities formerly open to private motgagees, and is compelling this class more and more to turn to other channels of investment, or place their funds in his hands for investment. 6. For the following reasons, but for the moratorium, he would to-day he in the position of assisting our supporters to their great goal of the socialisation of the means of production, e.g.: If the moratorium did not exist, he, as mortgagee, . was in the position to call up his mortgages; owing to the inability or the mortgagors to find cash at the present juncture, what- vast areas of farm lands'and town securities would become his property '! These lands -would then he sold atpresent realisable prices, or subdivided, and distributed among the masses ot the land hungry at a price commensurate with tho present day values of produce. . Perhaps the people whose moneys he controls would suffer, but then again they are mainly of the capitalistic classes, and the achievement oi the more equal distribution of wealth among the population-would he appreciably nearer.. Socialists, awake, rally round your champion, raise your voices in reply to the insidious cammign that is being conducted against him!—Tours, etc.. KARL MARX.