The Club Smoking Room.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLIII, Issue 6, 11 August 1909, Page 4

The Club Smoking Room.

By

HAVANA.

The Labonr JParty. ZV - \ ANY people,” the philosopher 4 I B remarked, “have written and I 7 spoken on the subject of a J new Labour party in New Zealand, but I cannot quite gather from the Babel of tongues what they expect to get from the new section in politics. They seem to imagine that the worker is entitled to the full profits arising from any industry in which he is engaged. They argue that all wealth is created by labour, and that the man who works with his hands is the sole producer of wealth. This is an absurdity as may be seen by taking any industry as an example. If a man builds a house be must have capital to buy his materials and to keep himself till he can sell it. If a man merely digs the ground and grows cabbages he must have enough capital to live on till the

Cabbages come up. Industry is a far more complicated affair than the worker imagines, and the worker is only entitled to his share of the profits. Whai Socialists Object to, “What we object to and want to remedy,” replied the Socialist, “is the fact that the great bulk of the capital of the country is not field by men who in apy sense “made” it. It is possessed by men and sown whose fathers or grandfathers may have been great captains of industry, or industrious bank*rs, or honest stockbrokers, or perhaps

only lucky speculators or successful company promoters. These men were some of them useful and all of them clever; their sons and grandsons, who now own their broad acres, and draw their fat dividends, possess their capital, their power to demand a share of all the wealth produced by labour, by the mere chance of birth, and they have not necessarily made, and need not in the future make, any return to the community for what they receive from it. You have given instances to show that capital is needed to establish any industry. That we do not deny. What we contend is that all capital should be nationalised and belong to the people as a whole and not to a few individuals as at present. Capital gets more than its fair share of the results of industry. A few idle landlords own large estates and draw enormous revenues from the toil of

their tenants. If the State owned all the land the rents paid would return to the community and could be used to further develop the country and increase its resources instead of going to pander to the luxurious tastes of the rich unemployed.” How Will It Be Done 1 “JMy dear fellow,” said the M.P., "how to you propose to nationalise, as you call it, all the capital and all the means of production and exchange? What about people who have been subscribing to friendly societies, are they to have

the savings of a lifetime nationalised T Does the State propose to appropriate all the sewing machines in the kingdom. A sewing machine is a means of production. Even needles must cease to be private property, for if a woman were allowed to have a needle of her own she might be so perverted as to stitch for one of her neighbours, and actually to make a charge for doing so. That would be intolerable. It would mean —to quote the cant phrase of the Socialists—‘ working for profit instead of for use,’ and might bring us back again to the ‘ Song of the Shirt.’ In the same way no man could be allowed to possess a spaae or a hammer. The. persons who were engaged to work in the communal garden would borrow their tools from the communal toolhouse. If a man wished to nail up a picture in his own room —assuming that he was allowed to call any room his own—he would have to make application at the Town-hall for the temporary use of a hammer and the permanent grant of one brass-headed nail.” J*

What Are Dividends ! “We don’t propose to go as far as that,” the previous speaker answered. “What we contend is that the commerce and industry of the nation is the concern of the nation as a whole, and that it is, therefore, the duty of the State to conduct our commerce and industry for the benefit of the whole nation. The worker at present is engaged in earning dividends for private people. You may Eave noticed the other day that a certain English match factory had paid its usual dividend of 14 per cent, WhaT does this mean? The shareholder in this factory draws his 14 per cent dividend because his grandfather left him capital which is invested in the shares. The matchmaker, getting 7/ or 87 a week, and sometimes phossy-jaw, the matchboxmaker toiling incredible hours for infinitesimal pay in a filthy garret, the match-seller standing at the kerb in sunshine and in storm, all are parts of a great machine whose sole aim and object, in the eye of the law, and at the bar of public opinion, is to earn those big dividends. And the same is true of all industries. Hundreds of thousands of men are hired in the last resort by shareholders, not one in a hundred of whom ever even attends a shareholders’ meeting or lifts a finger to control or promote the concern of which he is part owner.” <•# J*

“ Going the Whole Hogg.” “Labour,” the M.P. remarked, “will be doing a very silly thing if it divorces itself from the great Liberal party which has done so much to advance its interests along safe and sound lines. It will be like the dog dropping the bone it has for the reflection of the bone in the water. The Arbitration Act has given the worker a very fair and just share of the profits in all industries. Workers: get liberal compensation for all injuries. They have free education for their children and free school books. The capitalist is not always the bloated millionaire that Socialists picture him. Thousands of our working men are capitalists in a small way, and thousands more could be if they were more thrifty, and had greater foresight. The worker has far more freedom and liberty than the employer. The employer is hedged round with so many laws and restrictions that it often hardly pays him to employ labour at all. Labour has revolted because Government won’t go the whole Hogg. If a Labour party is formed we shall get all the evils of the three-party system together with endless leagues and coalitions that will make any stable form of government an impossibility. Either

that, or else the present Government aid Opposition will combine, and then Labour will be in hopeless minority. Reform carl only be permanent 1 ' when it proceeds oil sound lines. Anything that savours of revolution upsets the whole social and involves rich and poor alike in a common ruin. —