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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 73

Absurdity of the Present Position

Absurdity of the Present Position.

That is the position in which the New Zealand producers are at the present time; they are, in fact, hastening to bankruptcy; and all the members of the community, depending for success as they do upon the producers of staple articles, suffer with them.

I am no apologist for the loafer; the hard work of the world has to be done; he who will not work does not deserve to eat. There can be no wealth except by work and labor. You can make money, as the saying is, only by the work of your hands, your body, and your brain. But one is always met with the argument, if it can be called one, of a certain class of Political Economists, or, as I should more correctly call them, Apologists, for existing conditions in monetary matters, who say: "Oh, the causes of the depression, and of all those cares and want, are overproduction, and the extravagant ideas and high living of the people." And yet, in the same breath, they assert emphatically that all that is needed to improve matters is for the people to work more and harder, and to live sparingly and save—in short, that the community should work and produce more and consume less. If, for example, New Zealand has produced a million bushels of grain more than the people can purchase, they argue that the country should produce say another million bushels, and that at the same time the people should save by consuming a million bushels less than they were consuming before. In means that the less of purchasing power the country has, things will come all right, and everybody will be comfortable, provided only a great deal more is produced than before. Arguments like that only establish idiocy in those who use them, because it is self-evident that the mischief arises from under-consumption. The stuff is in the hinds of the wrong people. It was produced for consumption, and it ought to be consumed.

Now, it is a natural and a vert proper question for any of us [unclear: t] ask—Why is this? What can be done in order to get the products legitimately and honestly, into the hands of the people for whose consumption they were undoubtedly produced? There is plainly some screw loose in our social, politica[unclear: l], monetary arrangements when the page 3 very object of all production, namely, consumption, is hindered or defeated.

And, in these times of tighness of money, one may well ask whether money, or the want of money, plays any part in this state of matters, and what part, if any?