POINTS of INTEREST

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 74, Issue 144, 20 June 1931, Page 1 (Supplement)

POINTS of INTEREST

THE DECLINE OF SOCIALISM. 14 The general temperament of our people, which revolted from the nauseou. dose of Marxism, is not congenial eve . to the milder medicine of Fabianism,” writes Mr W. A. Hirst in the Quarterly Review. “Externally, there is a great change. The misery which existed at the time of Marx’s diagnosis, the widespread poverty of the ’eighties, do not now exist. When suffering from hardships, the worker was disposed to try remedies, but when tolerably comfortable he is averse. He does not like meddling and probably is beginning to realise that heavy taxa tion prejudices his prospects of employment. He respects private property, especially when it is his own. Further, in this generation a great change has come about, which works in the same direction. The place that amusements take in the general life has expanded so greatly as to be almost overwhelming. People thus pre occupied will not giv ■* much attention to revolutionary polities. Thus Socialism, after a rapid rise, hastens to decay. It has engaged a very large share of the national intelligence upon its formulation and development and has been Aery successful up to a point. But it was planted in uncongenial soil, with not much depth of earth, and now is withering away. To-day our need is not for changes of form', but for good and economical administration, firm government at home and abroad, and the cutting down of taxation. This cannot be provided by Socialism, and hence it is declining toward extinction. ’ ’ A CAPITAL LEVY. Commenting on the proposals which have been adopted by the Premiers’ Conference in Melbourne, Jobson’s Investment Digest says the conversion loan is in fact, though not in name, a capital levy. It means that within Australia, money is taken out of the commodity class and placed in the net price class. That is to say that so lung as the restriction on interest remains, as it must remain for some years, money will not have the earning capacity which it has as a commodity and one consequence will be the necessity of the banks and other institutions maintaining a strict control of the movement of capital out of Australia. This will be necessary because money is ordinarily liquid and will move of its own accord to where it obtains the best return and it is very esschfial for the rehabilitation of Australia that money shall be retained in the country. The capital value as reckoned in earning power of money invested in Government bonds will decrease by approximately 22 per cent. To some extent, this loss will be only nominal, and the loan being for a fixed term the value of he stocks will gradually recover, provided that money does not leave the country in too large a volume and that the cost of living is so reduced as to increase the earning power of the community. CONVERSION OF DEBT. Brief reference was made by Mr Snowden in his Budget speech to the possibility that during the year conditions may be favourable for considerable debt conversion operations. Since the actual maturities amount to only £1,681,000, this observation has naturally been interpreted as a reference to the 5 per cent, war loan, which may be redeemed at any time. The total debt of Great Britain at March 31 was £7,413,278,000, of which £1,066,663,000 is external; of the internal debt, the 5 per cent, war loan represents £2,086,977,000, or nearly one-third. Several reasons are given by the Financial News for saying that if the possibility of dealing with this portion of the debt arises this year, it will occur in the autumn. “But the possibility of a conversion operation is ruled out so long as the Government fails to introduce serious measures of economy,” it declared. “At heart, the City feels that the 5 per cent, war .oan is a strong weapon in its hand. On a hard-pressed Chancellor the £20,000,000 a year which might be saved through a really successful conversion must exercise a pawerf ul influence; and it lies with the city alone to decide whether conversion shall be possible or impossible. Until therefore, the Government gives some certain indication that economy, now the dearest object of city politics, is to be enforced, conversion cannot be considered.” THE COST OF SPECULATION. “The present depression was disclosed by the panic on the New York .Stock Exchange,” says the Hon. H. C. Pell, in the North American Review. “For several years an increasing pro portion of the available capital of the country was withdrawn from actual useful employment and allowed to reap a sterile profit as brokers’ loans. A man who wished to build a house or to develop a community and so, incidentally, to add to the profits of the great electric and steel manufacturing companies, found himself unable to borrow money except at an extortionate rate because of the competition of speculators in the stock of the very companies which his activities would have benefited. . . . We have seen the busi nes- organisation of the United States collapse and bring down with it the economic structure of the world. This crash has brought our country within an ace of bankruptcy and the world at large to the verge of ruin. . . I am convinced that the only effective wav to curb gambling is to take the profit out of it and the only way to do this is to break it with taxes.” Mr Pell estimates that speculative trading never involves more than one-fourth of the tota’ stock in existence, and suggests that a transfer tax of 1 per cent, on all sales would prevent “in and out” speculation without prejudicing legitimate transactions for genuine investment.

STAGNATION IN ART. An emphatic declaration that public art galleries in Britain are “utterly stagnant” and failing to give the public and the young artists facilities to study the great achievements of the painting world was made recently by Mr Arthur R. Howell in a contribution to the London Dady Telegraph. He remarks that through the puolie libraries, a week after publication the community is in immediate touch with highest thought and latest experiences in contemporary literary effort, which therefore have a real and vitalising influence upon their lives. But what of tne art galleries? Is painting of so small a significance that when its highest achievements reach the galleries they are no longer contemporary, but dead, without any connection with the spirit of the day? Of the men who have made and are making art history, the committees of the galleries apparently know nothing and care less. Yet they pose as being competent to direct the public taste. There is no other branch of knowledge in which such conditions exist. “It will be said that galleries cannot afford to buy the best paintings at the high prices commanded,” Mr Howell adds. “Of course they cannot. They wait too long and miss the market. . . But shortage of funds is really no excuse. An art gallery need spend no more than £lOOO a year to keep abreast of the times and be represented by the great painters. If intelligently spent, £5OO a year would give an adequate representation.” A PIONEER POWER STATION. Only 45 years have elapsed since “the parent generating station (if Great Britain” commenced the delivery of electricity. Its establishment was described recently, in a lecture to the Newcomen Society, by Colonel R. E. B. Crompton, who is now 86 years of age. The installation was that owned by the Kensington Court Company, afterwards th' Kensington and Knightsbridge Company, started by Colonel Crompvin to supply electricity to the houses then being erected on a site immediately south of Kensington High Street. Many private lighting plants had been erected in the early ’eighties for supplying individual houses, factories, buildings and theatres, but with the formation of the Kensington Court Company, however, a new chapter was opened by a house-to house supply of electricity. The change—for current was 8d a unit. The conductors consisted of bare copper strips, Jin. wide and Jin. thick, fixed to porcelain insulators in subways constructed in the streets as the site was being developed. The supply of current was started in 1886, the sufficient houses were being supplied by the end of 1887 to warrant the payment of a dividend of 5 per cent, on the capital invested. BRITISH SHIPBUILDING. The depression in shipbuilding in British yards is confirmed by the latest returns of Lloyd’s Register which show that the vessels under construction at March 21 totalled only 693,814 tons, which is 921,179 tons less than the total a year previously; this decline is the largest ever recorded during any twelve months, with the exception of the year 1922, when, following the completion of the largo ship-building programme occasioned by the war, there occurred an abnormal decline in the tonnage then under construction. Furthermore, only 32,685 tons of ship ping were commenced in British shipyards during the quarter under review, a paltry figure when it is remembered that during the six months ending March 31, 1930, the monthly average of shipping commenced was over 154,000 tons. There were 132 vessels on the stocks at the end of the quarter; of these, 57 vessels, aggregating 225,502 tons, were for owners in the British Dominions and in foreign countries. On the other hand, vessels under construction in other countries amounted to 1,306,052 tons, which is 344.884 tons less than a year previously. A SELF-PORTRAIT. Sir Edward Clarke concluded his memoir with the following passage:— ‘Sir Edward Clarke owed none of his success to any advantages of personal appearance. He was below the middle heigh* and of sturdy figure. His strong features gave the face a stern and almost harsh expression, and the brown eye- which might have softened it were half-closed under heavy brows. In his youth and early manhood he was not a favourite with men or women; his painful earnestness gave him an unattractive severity of appearance and manner; but in later life prosperity mellowed him, and the saving grace of humour displayed itself in some of Iris later speeches. His first wife died in 1882, and in the following year he married a lady nearly 20 years his junior, and of great personal charms. In her faithful ami affectionate companionship he enjoyed many more years of the greatest domestic happiness. Sir Edward left directions that after cremation his ashes should be placed beneath the chancel pavement of St. Peter’s Church, in a cinerary urn which was prepared for him bv the Martin Brothers i n 1901, and has "since stood on a bookcase in his dinin<room. ’’ FAMOUS LAWYER'S MEMOIR. The announcement of the death, on April 26, of Sir Edward Clarke, K.C., in h* s . 9Lst. year, was accompanied in the Times by a memoir written by Sir Edward himself, the manuscript of which he sent to the Times on .March 31, 1913. In the accompanying letter he wrote: “It .seems to me that an obituary notice of a man should bwritten by himself, if he should have reached old age (as is the case with me) and should by his gradual detachment from the occupations and in

terests which hav Idled his life become capable of viewing fairly in perspective the events of his career.” Sir Edward had had an eevotful us well as distinguished career at the Bat and in politics. He was by far the senior K.C. and the oldest Bencher of Lincoln’s Inn. His memoir, with a brief supplementary notice, occupied three columns in the Tinies. Its opening sentences were: ‘‘The death of Sir Edward Clarke was the (dose, so far as earthly activities are concerned, of a very busy and very happy life. Sir Edward always spoke of himself ns one of the most fortunate of men, and was wont, to say that the lisappoint ment s of his career had generall\ turned out to he good fortune in disguise. ’’