CAPITAL AND LABOUR.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIC, Issue 14042, 28 October 1909, Page 3

CAPITAL AND LABOUR.

ERRORS OR SOCIALISM. That eminent student of economics, Mr W. H. Mallock, whose " Labour and the Popular Welfare" remains the most convincing refutation of Henry Geprgcism, has been subjecting socialism to a further and searching cViticfsm in the pages of the "Nineteenth Century Review." Ho attacks the root idea in Marx's socialism, the theory that labour is the only clement in wealth; that labour—the amount of labour expended in their production—is the purchase money of all things. The conclusion from this premise was ready to hand—if labour produces- all wealth, labour should possess ali wealth The French economist Gide asked pertinently, if wealth is dependent solely upon the amount of labour expended in its production, how does the difference in value arise between a more delectable piece of beef and a less favoured part ? A\Try of a Curot worth £3,000, and some other labourions painting wortfh only as many pence Y Mr. Mallock asks other questions—how, for example', can the socialists explain the enormous increase of wealth which has resulted from and kept pace witli capitalism, as the socialists call the present system of production? The real cause of the increase, Mr. Mallock answers, is the fact that in this present system there is the separation, not of labour from capital, but of manual effort. Times have changed since the cobbler made his boots a standard pattern for ins neighbours. .Nov the markets are wiuer and more complex; machinery has increased the volume of production ; tastes have to be reckoned with and demands anticipated. Competition has made slight differences in the cost of production of importance. The work of the director of labour is now an essential. The wealth of nations has been ncreased because, by means of the system which the socialists reviles under the malignant term "capitalistic," priduction is controlled by a minority whose efficiencies influence ordinary labour for the good of all. There are, as the writer states, those efficiencies which enable a given number of men to obtain and work up an increased quantity of material into an increased number of commodities. This represents one form <;f good management and efficient busiiie.-s control. In the second place, there ;ire th.:>o efficiencies which, with while productive jjowor incrases, si Ule the form <!' production, which changes from time t-j time. "It is only in pron< rlion as these latter efficiencies, hy vv.hieh the individual character and quality of slperfluous commodities is deceniiinc'l, act in conjunction with those thai. merely enable cniiunedities, wi].'t v er may be their kind, to, be multiplied that the world is richer to-day than it was three hundred years sign."' And the result of the world's being richer is not merely that there are more of the wealthy class in the world—this result may' not follow —but that there is a greater dividend of the commodities that satisfy human wants, a larger stock for the supply of all. In railing at tbe present system, the ociaialist would have his audience beep in mind the capatilist, an exaggerated figure always, a caricature often, and draws all the help he can from the cupidity and the jealousy of those who nnwillinglv are among the 'have-nots.' He would have his hearer overlook the other relation, which is more essential to the present system—the beneficent association of emplovcr and worker, each with his own functioii. and together the strower for their joint purpose of production-