LABOUR AND CAPITAL.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 46, Issue 14147, 19 June 1920, Page 4

LABOUR AND CAPITAL.

The need for more production lias never been so urgent in the history of the world than it is to-day. The war lias left the world practically depleted of its stocks. Never before lifivc the two great partners, Capital and Labour, been more antagonistic than ai the present time. Such a state of affairs is not in the best interests of a State. In New Zealand the conditions are, perhaps.' not as bad as exist in older countries, but even in this Dominion the. two classes are bitterly estranged. What is t lie solution of this difficult problem ? What can be done to remove the bitterness ! Speaking at the annual meeting of the shareholders of the Bank of New Zealand yesterday, Air H. Beauchamp (chairman of directors) jeet: —‘*Atucli .of the present bitterhad the following to say on the silliness between the two great agencies must be due to misunderstanding or simply blind antagonism, and our unflinching determination should be to dispel these causes by bringing the parties as much as possible together. J do not ignore the stupendous difficulty of the problem, but it must lie faced and solved, or national disaster is before ms. To this end the proposal that the Prime Alinister should call a national industrial conference of both employers and employed is surely a step in the right direction. This would at least disclose more clearly root causes and basic differences, and open up a possible path to genuine co-operation and industrial concord.’' Such a conference, we think, would bear good fruit.