COMMONSENSE TALK.

Waipa Post, Volume XXI, Issue 1301, 7 October 1922, Page 2

COMMONSENSE TALK.

(From "What We Want and Where We Are," by W. G. Appleton, General Secretary of the British Trades and Labour Council.)

"Whenever unrest is accentuated by unemployment and poverty, the baser kind of politician finds ample opportunities."

"High wages, short hours, cheap food, and cheap housing accommodation are desirable things, but they are impossible apart from high efficiency, and maximum production. "It is not merely in the interests of individuals that employment should be better stabilised. It is in the interests of the State, because labour is, in itself, capital, and to waste labour is to waste national resources."

"It may sound nice to say from the platform that one' is happy in being called, a Communist. It would be equally wise to say that one was happy in never having read history, in being ignorant of economics, and in denying the existence of human fallibility." "The old strikes were undertaken for the purpose of compelling capitalists to behave decently. The new strikes are, too often, undertaken for the purpose of destroying the capitalist form of industry, or of forcing upon a democratically elected Government the will of'a revolutionary minority.

"Those who suggest change by violence may aim blows at the Government, but the blows will surely fall upon the people. It would be better if we adopted the simple expedient of bringing from Russia all those who are tired of revolution and sending to Russia all those who want to experiment in revolution. By this means we might make all the discontents contented."

"Neither Governments nor Parliaments can override .economic law, and the attempt to do so has brought revolution very near to us. Get hack, or perhaps forward, to sane conceptions; let capital and labour settle their differences between themselves, and let the State content itself by keeping the ring, interfering legislatively only when lfie and health and material are in danger."