MODERN ECONOMICS

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 52, Issue 3756, 15 May 1936, Page 3

MODERN ECONOMICS

MADHOUSE PHILOSOPHY. “Formerly the public prayed regularly for protection against famine, now they are taught to pray as fervently for failure of crops; while the Government employs several corps of scientists to discover methods for destroying chinch-bugs, boll weevils, locusts, wheat rust and other pests, and erects factories to manufacture cheap fertilisers from the fields of the farmer that they may yield greater abundance, we at the same time pay the farmer for not utilising the fertilisers. . At the Same time that we hear people complain of over-popula-tion we hear them recommending the destruction of surplus food; some groups talk of increasing the wealth by merely increasing the wages of labour; others recommend the destruction of the products of labour in order to increase the demand for more such products, and all demand more technological schools and colleges to teach youth how to make the soil more productive and the efforts of man generally more effective. But why continue this catalogue of madhouse philosophies?”—Mr John Rustguard in The Problem of Poverty.