Joe Hamlet’s Ideas

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 142, 17 June 1931, Page 6

Joe Hamlet’s Ideas

To the Editor. Dear Sir, —Mr Joseph Hamlet has made a revolutionary change in his opinion in relation to the importation of. goods since he was in this country a couple of years ago. At that time he strongly condemned importation and said that to be prosperous we must produce our own necessities. He once said he would make Oudeis look like “ an old straw hat in the whirlpools of Niagara.” He has evidently since then learned the true significance of importation, as in bis latest publication he truly says, “ You can only pay for goods with goods. The more goods you import the more demand there is for domestic labour.” I have been pointing out the same facts for the last forty years. Unfortunately it is not what a person says of a thing which counts, but who says it. If our worthy Mayor would only learn the alphabet of economics he would cease to use the senseless manufacturers’ slogan “ Keep the money in the country.” The value of money to the country, like the value of everything else, is th# value of the labour necessary to produce it. All the money used in this country during the last fifteen years, apart from the silver and bronze, could be produced by a few thousand pounds worth of labour, and that is all that it is worth to the country, whatever it may be to the individual possessors of it. No other country would have it as a gift. I am as much in favour as anyone of using the produce of the labour of this country in preference to using the produce of the labour of any other country if it can be produced with as little labour. If however, any part of 'the produce of the labour of this country can only be bought for as little labour as the produce of overseas labour by imposing heavy import duties, /then it is the duty of all both to themselves and to the country to buy the imported goods. If a person had shares in a boot factory which made a profit of a fourth of the price of each pair of boots sold and persisted in buying all the boots which he required from another firm, in which he had no interest, it would be said that he ought to be put into Sunnyside. Yet he would be no worse than those who persist in buying locally made boots when they can buy imported ones for the same price after one fourth of the price has been paid to the Government as import duty. We are all shareholders in the Government, and if we do not pay our share of its expenses through Customs duties we will have to pay it in some other way. The trouble with most people is that they will not see the fundamental principle of economics, that all exchangeable value is the produce of labour, and that therefore all exchanges of value are exchanges of labour and all the goods imported into the country are purchased with the labour of the country as surely as those which are made here, excepting of course those which are borrowed or brought into the country by people who come here to settle.—l am, etc., OUDEIS