PRIVATE ENTERPRISE

Waikato Times, Volume 194, Issue 22355, 23 May 1944, Page 4

PRIVATE ENTERPRISE

NEED FOR CO-OPERATTON EMPLOYERS AND EMPLOYED Unless employers could show their employees that the -system of free enterprise was a sounder proposition than anything else then every employee was a potential slayer of the system, said Mr R. M. Algie, M.P. for Remuera. at the weekly luncheon of the Hamilton Rotary Club yesterday during an address on the future of private enterprise. Mr Algie pointed out that we were struggling along in a sort of vacuum of intellectual thought, a risky and unsatisfactory progress. What exactly were we fighting for? he asked. What was our conception of the sort of peace we were striving for? We had been told that we were fighting for freedom, yet we were also told that when the war was over we must expect a long continuance of the controls that had been necessary to ensure victory. Message of Hope

During the last war, continued the speaker, the people had in writing what they could expect when peace came, but today they could find little in the politics of the present day to give hope to the enslaved peoples of the world. They were merely told that the Allies would free them.

During the last war, continued the speaker, President Wilson had gone to Europe with a message of hope for the future, but who today had a message? The trend today was away from representative Government to dictatorship and from private enterprise to State bureaucracy; away from the League of Nations to power politics. Free enterprise, working by itself, asserted Mr Algie, was not capable of solving the problems of tomorrow, and bureaucratic control was too wasteful to produce the desired results, if we were to prosper. In this war it had been found that cooperation was necessary for successful achievement. On the fighting front it was the Army, the Navy and the Air Force, and on the home front management, labour and capitaL In wartime it was an easy matter to obtain co-operation because they had to keep together to achieve victory. What was going to hold us together after the war? asked Mr Algie. What was needed was the co-operation of -management, labour and capital working for the common good. Employees should be encouraged to take an interest in the business in which they were employed.