A NEW SOCIAL PEST.—THE CREDITOR.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXII, Issue XXII, 3 June 1899, Page 764

A NEW SOCIAL PEST.—THE CREDITOR.

THIS colony promises to be the paradise of the small debtor within a reasonable length of time, if the views of one section of the electors are allowed to exercise a predominant influence in the making of the laws. I notice the other day that the Workers’ Union in Wellington passed a resolution praying that whenever a debt collecting agency takes legal proceedings against a debtor, the name of the trader instituting such proceedings or assigning his debt to such agency, shall be published as well as the names of all the members composing the agency. And further it was resolved that all imprisonment in debt cases should be abolished. Now there are few of us such Shylocks that we would wish to see a return to the old brutal and often useless methods of enforcing payment of a debt. But the •Workers’ Union would apparently carry us much further than the dictates of the most philanthropic conscience among us ever led. Under the new regime that it Would inaugurate the creditor would be a person without any rights whatsoverer, and would eventually be boycotted out of existence. We are getting accustomed to the idea of the capitalist being an individual who exists for the benefit of the working man, and we have little pity for him. But there is a vast difference between a creditor and a capitalist. On a cursory view of the matter there might appear some reason in the assumption that a man

must to a certain extent be the latter before he can be the other—for how can you lend if you do not possess? But modern conditions have rendered such logic quite antiquated. We all know that for a man to be a creditor by no means presupposes that he is a capitalist. There are few of us capitalists, but, bless you, there are very few who are not creditors. Such legislation as the Workers’ Union would have hits us all round, therefore, except of course those who are absolutely penniless, and no doubt it is that class which the union intends to benefit. This, I suppose, is what its promoters would call mass legislation, but if I do not greatly err it is class legislation of the very worst type, and where it will finally end Heaven only knows. It is fostering the class which does not want to pay, and probably has no intention of paying its just debts. A pretty state of things would we find ourselves in if such ideas were carried out to the full. The very class that hopes to benefit by them would be the first to suffer under the new regime. Some folks do not bother to follow these questions beyond the pleasant foreground which they present. They do not trouble themselves with after results, so enamoured are they with the immediate gain. And it is indeed a delightful prospect to be able to run up innumerable bills, and then when the tradesman asks you for his money, to give him in charge as an insolent and pestiferous fellow. What a time some people would have so long as that law lasted.