VOICE OF THE PEOPLE

Taranaki Daily News, 21 October 1933, Page 9

VOICE OF THE PEOPLE

VIEWS ON CURRENT TOPICS AMENDMENT TO COMPANIES BILL. IS IT NOT CLASS LEGISLATION? (To the Editor.) Sir,—Can you or an y y°ur readers explain .why it is that Messrs. Forbes, Coates, Ransom, Macmillan and Adam Hamilton consider their fellow farmers are so lacking in intelligence as to require legislative protection preventing their being canvassed for shares? The proposed pew Companies Bill permits a business man to be canvassed for shares in his office. Is that because our farmer Prime Minister and his farmer colleagues in the Cabinet have some grievance against the city man, or belonging as they do to the farming community, do they wish to infer that the farmer is a person of lower intelligence and therefore must not be canvassed? It is convenient, of course, to copy the English section relative to share hawking, but then is England governed by farmers or business men?. If the .brain and intelligence of the New Zealand farmer is considered by our politicians to be equal to that of his city brother possessed of an "office” within the meaning of the proposed new Act, by what process of reasoning is one class in the community to be granted a monopoly of backing new flotations at the expense of the other? Are we to admit that the above-mentioned Ministers are sufficiently intelligent to govern this Dominion, but on their retirement from politics and return te their former farming occupation are under the new Companies Act to be classified as persons of lower calibre, to whom no offer of shares must be made unless it be by their sharebroker? If too poor to indulge in the luxury of a sharebroker are they (because they are farmers) to be protected against themselves lest they back a dud flotation? The biggest industry in this Dominion is farming. Without the farmer this country would have been bankrupt long ago. It is surely a poor tribute to the intelligence of the man on the. land to legislate against him upon the . ground that unless he has a sharebroker to think for him he is unfit to decide for himself where and how he shall invest his savings. I suppose the greater proportion of our M’s.P. are fanners—considered fit to govern this Dominion—yet this group of Coalition politicians solemnly advises the country that the class from which they have sprung, the class representing nearly half the people of this Dominion and producers of 90 per cent, of our exports, must not make any investment except through a licensed sharebroker. And because they make their livelihood in the country instead of in the town they must not be canvassed for shares. Xn other words it is inferred that they need protection on account of their ignorance, but that , the man in the town possessed of an office is to be considered a person able to think and act for himself, and therefore may be canvassed by anyone; that the standard of a man’s intelligence is to depend, not on his occupation, but on the fact as to whether he does or does not possess an office.—l am, etc., ..

COMMONSENSE. Auckland, October 19.,

CURE FOR WORLD’S TROUBLES.

(To the Editor.)

Sir,—lt is a very hopeful sign when the heads of the Church in its various ( divisions are publicly announcing that something must be done by the Government to cure the intolerable conditions under which a large section of the community is at present existing. The trouble is that the Government, if it, sees the road, is afraid to trayel on it. The Church is apparently hot clear itself as to the cause of the “intolerable conditions.” Douglas, with his credit* system believes he sees both cause and cure. Frank Arkwright in his bopk“The A.B.C. of Technocracy,” attributes to machinery and debt the cause of the world trouble. But beneath and deeper down than these economists go, Henry George in “Progress and Poverty” proved this position. ' There are three factors in the production of the sum total of the wealth of a nation—land, labour and capital,' with their returns, .The payment for land, or the use of it, is economic rent; for labour, wages; for capital, interest. Henry George proved that the application of labour to land produces capital, and that where land was cheap labour and capital obtained larger returns, but as civilisation advanced with its greater technical knowledge and more effective labour, land with its return, economic rent, took a larger and larger share of production. Nearly fifty years ago Henry George stated that the rapid invention of labour-saving machinery was ' not only labour-saving but labourer-saving, and that given a State where machinery was brought to such perfection that human labour was practically eliminated there would exist a situation where the majority of the people would be out of employment, but the land of that State would be of enormous value. In a modified form Time is proving him correct. Read “Technocracy” and see what has happened in America and what is still happening. Give me the land of a country, acknowledge my right to collect payment for its use in the shape of economic rent, and I will own the people of that country, banks included, body and soul. I need not fix the payment for its use. They will do that for me in competition with one another for the right to live upon it. The cure for the “intolerable conditions” man made lies in man’s own hands. Nationalise economic rent, use it for local and Government services, abolish as early as; possible Customs duties, income taxes, dole taxes, sales tax, and you free labour, at the same time freeing land from an ever-growing debt which strangles production and can never be paid.—l am, etc., DAVID L. A. ASTBURY. Mangatoki, October 20.

SCRAP IRON FOR JAPAN.

(To the Editor.)

Sir,—l read with some astonishment a recent report in the Daily News-stating that the New Plymouth. Harbour Board had completed negotiations for the disposal of its scrap iron at a purely nominal fee to Japan. In the Boer War, according to Mr. H. G. Wells in his monumental work “The Work, Wealth and Happiness of Mankind,” many of our men had the melancholy satisfaction of being shot with bullets manufactured in Britain. Are we to be required at some future date, through the charity of our harbour board, to support local products in a similar fashion? —I am, etc., “COLONEL BOGEY.” New Plymouth, October 20.