BAD TIMES IN THE UNITED STATES.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 143674, 19 December 1911, Page 7

BAD TIMES IN THE UNITED STATES.

MR. HILL'S FORECAST. ‘•National indigence approaches.” exclaimed James J. Hill, in a series of jeremiads on the depressing political and industrial outlook in the United States. Emphasising ibe prediction that there will be more idle men during the coming winter in the United States than ever before, the railway magnate said to the Illinois Bankers’ Association: “Big business, especially in railway operations, is at a standstill, because so many important interests are cither under fire or apprehensive of assault.” Mr. Hill proceeded to “examine the political nostrums now almost talked about,” and found they would all involve the continued expenditure of vast sums of money to be collected by taxation. Men who pay these taxes are holders of property. The men who vote these expenditure are also taxpayers, but in addition there is a more numerous body of electors, who either pay no taxes or share so inconsiderably that its increase is not felt. Hence the constantly increasing disposition on the part of the nation to 'change the distribution of wealth by legislation, taking it by enormous .appropriations from those who have accumulated and scattering it among those who have not. The end of such a system might be delayed, but could nob bo in doubt, as capital exhausted is not renewed. The public is educated to refuse to work and to spend lavishly. It looks to the State as a cow that can keep everybody supplied with all the milk that* may be required for an indefinite • period.* Labour, how'over, suffers in the end, exactly as it docs when its three meals arc reduced to two. Air. Hill said that the remedy for trusts was really simple. “Trusts would vanish as soon as they were compelled to show that every dollar of capital stock had been paid for in cash or property and labour at a fair valuation. Oblige every corporation to do this under a penalty of assessment on the stockholders to make good anv deficiency in capital and trusts will not long bother anybody. Many of them are more or less interested in selling stocks and bonds not representing actual values received or used.” Mr. Hill’s speech was enforced by a striking address delivered by Air. Roger W. Babson, an eminent statistician and business expert, who, after declaring that it was impossible to legislate the people of the United States into a condition of honesty, expressed his convictiion that the country was approaching a period of panic and depression of a length which would begin in inverse ratio to its seventy.