DEBATABLE POINTS.

Taranaki Daily News, 28 April 1930, Page 8

DEBATABLE POINTS.

Even those who are strongly attracted by Mr. W. J. Polson’s proposals for the solution of this country’s most pressing problems will recognise at oiice that he has included in hie scheme some highly debatable points. His plan for the reduction of the cost of living and working in the Dominion will appear to many people to be incomplete because he insists upon the maintenance of high wages by the Arbitration Court while his proposed levelling down process is operating in other directions. Since the wage-earners would share with the rest of the community the benefit to be derived from the reduction of Customs duties as soon as it came into force, they would actually continue in receipt of wages substantially above the level of the existing standard. Not only would the standard of comfort, concerning which Mr. Polson shows such remarkable tenderness, be maintained; it would in effect be improved. It must be admitted that people who are not among the wage-earners would also be better off than before, but Mr. Polson’s idea is that their savings, or additional resources, should be devoted, not to increasing their personal comfort, but to the altruistic purpose of enlarging their businesses —farming, industrial and commercial—in order that production should be increased and more workers employed. Surely the duty to improve the condition of the Dominion devolves upon all citizens alike, the wage-earners as well as the others, and if the times call for extra effort and personal sacrifice the wage-earners should be equally willing with the rest to do their share. If Mr. Polson’s scheme is worth anything, it seems to us thathe could strengthen it very materially by enlarging it to cover the abolition, or at least a very complete reorganisation, of the Arbitration Court. That tribunal has had a great deal to do with forcing the Dominion into its present difficulties, for it has consistently. allotted to labour so large a proportion of the proceeds of industry that enterprise has been crippled and unemployment has been increased. If Mr. Polson had taken cognisance of this fact his scheme perhaps would have commended itself more readily to many thinkers. It may be, of course, that he has deliberately taken a provocative attitude in relation to this aspect of his subject, just as he has expressed a seemingly inexplicable preference for settlement of the barren remnant of the Crown lands rather than the subdivision of country that could be quickly brought to profit. If this is the case it is to be hoped that his device will prove effective.