A QUICK WAY DOWN

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXII, Issue 19478, 24 December 1925, Page 15

A QUICK WAY DOWN

IF BRITAIN TURNED BED. TRADE UNIONIST’S VIEW. “Incredible hardship, if not starvation, would be the one certain and immediate result of revolutionary action, in Great Britain.” writes Mr. M T . A. Appleton, secretary of the General Federation of Trade Unions in 1907, in tho course of a blunt article published in the “Daily Mail.” “Nor would it be possible for the dictatorship to avert this calamity, or to prevent its continuance, because none of us can visualise America and the Argentine, or even our own Dominions, sending food to a Britain turned Red. “If the revolutionaries ever did any projective thinking, they would realise that the chief obstacles to revolution are not our own middle classes, but the great Republics and Dominions which supply us with food and raw materials. The average man and woman do realise these things, and that is why they remain unenamoured of tho revolutionary programme.

“Nationalisation, it is urged, is a horse of another colour. It may be, but it involves confiscation, which is, in polities, the polite word for theft, or it commits the community to compensations which would more seriously our overseas selling possibilities than anything now existing. “It should never lie forgotten that nationalisation, while it necessarily transfers ■wealth, does not necessarily create it. A case may bo made out for a bettor distribution of existing wealth, but that would help us but very little. “What we really need is more wealth to distribute, and no student of human nature imagines for one moment that under nationalisation, with every man assured of his pob and promised a satisfactory wage, the production per working unit would be increased. “It is well to remember that at the present moment, without purchase and without disturbing international relationships, the Government of this country is partner in every industrial and commercial enterprise; that it takes, in the shape of taxes, at least 25 per cent, of all profits made by every man and woman who works, and this without the slightest risk or liability for losses.

“Under the existing system, the Government, the sleeping, or sleepy, partner, always stands to win. Under nationalisation it would always stand to lose. Upon its shoulders would then rest the responsibility for wages, economic or otherwise, for maintenance and for development, both of individuals and businesses.

“Assuming nationalisation to have been brought about in this country, does anyone in his senses expect immunity from friction with countries not similarly situated, or does he tlunk that a Government official, bound by regulation and political exigencies, can ever hold his own with the keen and untrammelled business men of other countries? It would be ludicrously unfair to expect so much of him. “There is, of course, an impression among some revolutionaries and nationalisers that some of them might take tho place of directive civil servants. But this would hardly ten i to increase national confidence or reduce international friction. The platform is not a good training ground for business, and political organisation within a State is hardly the same as business organisation which must extend beyond ihc State. “Revolution ami nationalisation embrace the programmes of the minority. The majority desire safer and surer ways. They cannot in any case he easy ways; things have drifted too far for I that. But those who say that the situation is hopeless and so ‘lot us eat, i drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we !die.’have no final justification for their attitude.”