How To Save Capitalism

Waikato Times, Volume 117, Issue 19597, 8 June 1935, Page 13 (Supplement)

How To Save Capitalism

(Milo Perkins, in “The Nation.”)

MY PARTNER and I own our own business. As a member of our national code committee I have had a chance to see more of the New Deal than would otherwise have been the case, and like most business men I have thought more about our national problems this past year than in all the previous years of my life combined. Not only did the depression threaten our company, but in •March, 1933, I wondered if the whole capitalist system had not permanently fallen of its own weight. Of course there has been a marked recovery, but to be honest about it, the leadership has come from the Federal Government and not from either industrialists or financiers. Capitalism has been helped by stronger hands than its own, but its place in the civilisation of to-morrow is by no means assured. A few diehards resent the minimum waga provisions of the N.R.A. and feel that their “ rights as employers ” have been denied them, but the vast majority Gladly Relinquish the “Privilege” of having to pay less than a decent wage to avoid bankruptcy. Those who do not must be drunk with arrogance to imagine that the people they would oppress can be persuaded to perpetuate their tyranny. If the capitalists of the country don’t wake up and use some of the brains (which have been used to amass millions) to work out the human problems which confront their fellow Americans, then Mr Roosevelt’s opposition will come from the extreme left, which wants to abolish the whole system, anyway. Possibly that Is just what private ownership has coming to it, but I hope not: I'm prejudiced. The day is gone, however, when those of us who have can turn our backs on those who have not. This twentieth century has no charm that I know of which guarantees any permanent connection between our heads and the bodies that have grown accustomed to supporting them. Because the markets are up from the levels of March, 1933, we capitalists arc not awake, as a class, to the Crisis Which Faces Us. Men and women have a right to jobs that are Interesting and homes that arc fit for their children. The whole private ownership of production is failing as a system to provide those fundamental things for our people. Revolution has been averted by Government help for the unemployed, but if capitalism is unable effectively to work out a programme which will solve these problems, our people will demand their solution from other sources. Every child knows that w r e have the resources and the machinery to raise our standard of living enormously if tilings were properly managed. 1

We capitalists aro squarely faced with this question—are we competent to do the managing? Let us look at ourselves, before It is too late. As a class we own the means of production. We acquired this machinery over a period of about 75 years. During that time the population was growing, the frontier was moving west, and the demand for railroads, homes, and new factory equipment, kept the wheels turning at a good profit. We put most of that profit back into more factories to make

Moro Things for More People,

and stimulated their wants through advertising. It is we who have spent billions upon building up this hunger i'or a higher standard of living, it, is we who have got away from the pay-as-you-go basis and invented instalment credits to keep our own plants running. The common people had nothing to do with it. \Vc promoted a finer standard of living than civilisation had ever seen, not because wo were altruistic, but because we wanted to keep the plants wo

American Manufacturer’s Candid Views.

owned at work. The distribution of both luxuries and ne cess ties up to 1929 was incidental to out am This is not an appeal to altruism, appeal to pocket-books. Machinery is valuable if you can turn the wheels at a p SS& V 2JTJ SS ir £ off our individual pay-rolls, but they also Lost Customers for Capitalism QC „ svstem We have deprived them of income *in a civilisation where m°neY s needed to buy what one wants It cannot go on. Plants cannot run without cus tomers, and customers cannot buy without money from capitalists trying to turn theh “U/Vbeyona dud***, jrfw capitalists and their wage-earning customers are viewed as two national gioups. As' individuals we are a-s helpless as the working-man was before the days of the union. Each of us "is tethered to the post of his own business, and no one man s rope is long enough to give free range over the entire country. Only the rope oi capitalism as an institution Is long enough to do that. Therefore we capitalists must unite on a programme which we can present to the nation. But if we do organise such a project let us not fall into the lundamental error of organised .labour. They fought us—their wage-paying employers— Instead of fighting for an Improved social order. Let us not fight them —our wageearning customers —but let us fight for a programme which will enrich the whole country. We who have fought oui way to the top of this commercial civilisation are supposed to be more intelligent than those who work for us. It’s time to prove it. Our resourcefulness is toeing put to the last test. Either we must develop the ingenuity to finance those who want to work for us so that they can buy from us, or we shall live to see them employed in such a fashion that they can get what they want for their work from other sources. Capitalism should fight for a 30-hour week and a Hat 25 per cent increase in salaries and wages. This is the only way it can Finance the Working Public so that they can buy the products it has machines to make. Any lesser plan, such as a 10 per cent decrease in hours and a 10 per cent increase in pay will be a selfdefeating compromise. It is destined to fail because it does not go far enough. If we put such a proposition up to Congress, to be tried for two years as an emergency experiment, that body would surely grant us the emergency concessions necessary to protect us, such as the licensing of new industries lin fields where overproduction could be proved. In return for that we should agree either to restrict profits or pay liberal wage dividends. I know that is not the way we’ve been taught to think, but there is no use for unwieldy surpluses when there are no further large fields for expansion. Otherwise the same old cycle that ended In the depression will repeat itself. Higher wages made necessary by a rising cost of living, which must again be raised to meet the increased costs which include them, are not prosperity. We should take violent steps to avoid that process in our own self-interest-There is only one way to prevent it, and that is to see that the extra money paid out to more people is kept moving, and not permitted to pile up in' the hands of the i'cw who can find no profitable field in which to invest it. This is the price which capitalism must pay to perpetuate itscir. Personally, I think it's cheap: I know it’s preferable to Fascism or Communism.