PRIVATE ENTERPRISE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 80, Issue 301, 20 December 1937, Page 6

PRIVATE ENTERPRISE

Sir.— If it can be shown that, under private enterprise it costs less to shift a yard of earth, what docs it show? I submit that it is only by working their employees up to and beyond the limit of human endurance, by evading regulations concerning their hours of labour, by dismissing them to avoid paying for holidays, by employing youths at low wages and dismissing them when they are entitled to higher, that they might make a favourable showing. This they can do only as long as there is a surplus of labour, and we know private entcprise is straining perpetually to keep this surplus of labour. Ambition to excel in any branch of work that improves the social standard is certainly praise-worthy, but under private enterprise, ambition is degraded into the will to take advantage of your fellows. This is what we have to teach our children to fit them for this disorganised world. Mr. Hamilton often refers to the unwisdom of “keeping the better man down.” Is the ability of a man to be gaged by his wealth? I say very definitely No! Many fortunes are made because of fortuitous circumstances, and it is common Knowledge that men who have most benefited the world through their inventions have been poor men. Is a man with an acquisitive instinct to be given an absolutely free rein to deprive his “lesser” fellows? Whatever Mr. Hamilton thinks about this, it can only lead to anarchy. Even now under "private enterprise" men are being illegally deprived cf the benefits of shorter hours, and if they complain their jobs are gone. I think the Inspector of Labour should inspect all factories and find the conditions and not wait for the men to complain. And there are some people, sir. that consider this to be a very proper and desirable state of affairs, and lhe socialism that would attempt to change it, detestable. ■— I am. etc., "H.M.G..” (Further Public Opinion on Page 9)