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LABOR NEWS AND VIEWS
'The Daily News' has complied with
a request to publish once a week a
column of Labor news and views.
This contribution will appear every
Tuesday, it being understood that
we do not necessarily subscribe to
the opinions expressed. The matter
is supplied officially and can be
taken as the voice of the Labor
movement in Western Australia.
Senator Daly, in a recent statement
to the Senate, estimated tue number cf
unemployed workers in the : Common
wealth at 180,000. This estimate is
based on the returns sent in by the
trade unions, and, as all unions do not
send in returns and as thousands of
people who are not unionists are out of
work, it is certain that it is far below
the total number now without employ
ment. An estimate of 250,000 would
be nearer to the mark.
UNEMPLOYMENT BRINGS.
STAGNATION
If we average the wage such people
would . be receiving were they in em-'
ployment at £4 per week, which amount
is £1 5s below the present Common-'
wealth average, we find that £1,000,000
per week, or £52,000,000 per year, is
being lost to the trade and commerce
of Australia. Our purchasing power is
being reduced to that extent. Is it any
wonder1 that depression and stagnation
have come upon us, or that traders and
primary producers are finding it diffi
cult to carry on. The loss of wages
would be almost sufficient to pay our
annual interest bill of £55,000,000.
? It is known that when workers are
employed they produce wealth ' far m
excess of the wages they receive. Each
worker employed in the manufacturing
industries last year produced value over
and above what he received in wages to
the extent of £350. If we multiply, this
by 250,000, the number now out of
work, we arrive at a total of £87,500,
000. This total of surplus value created
would meet our annual interest com
mitments and leave a balance of £32,
500,000.
UNEMPLOYMENT, A FOLLY
Such estimates are not put forward
as accurate statements of what would
actually occur if our unemployed were
put back into Industry, but merely as
rough illustrations to enable us to en
visage the absurdity — the criminal folly
— of a community tolerating the exist
ence of wprkless thousands, and ac
cepting their unemployment as inevit
able rather than recognising that un
employment is easily preventable'.
What then should be done? .The
problem should and must be tackled im
mediately. There is almost . complete
unanimity amongst employers and pub
licists, that the remedy lies in the future
development of our export trade. They
tell us that we must lower the stand
ard of living, lower wages, decrease
costs, and increase production. Such
contentions are based on the belief
that the retention and extension of our
export trade are essential to our ma
terial salvation. The struggle for ex
port trade is the factor that dominates
all their thinking and talking.
To develop such trade means under
cutting our overseas competitors; in the
final analysis it means reducing our
workers and producers to the lowest
.standard of the lowest conditioned coun
try on earth. Logically followed out,
it means that we must, reduce costs un
til we can successfully compete with/
other countries, then if they reduce
their costs we must follow suit, and so
on until we are thrown back to the
days of 'Industrial slavery.
DEVELOP THE HOME MARKET
Against this destructive doctrine, La
bor advances what has been termed the
'home-market' point of view. Goods
are exchanged for goods, and wealth is
nroduced for consumption and exchange.
The object of the exchange being simply
that of obtaining possession of some
other form of goods which will also be
consumed, or used for creating further
wealth. It is true that goods are ex
changed for money, but later that
money is exchanged for other goods.
If we can produce in Australia all
that we require, then an export trade
is unnecessary. The . necessity for
cutting down' wages, for reducing, our
standard of living, and for cutting out
efforts for social amelioration, in order
that we might compete in the markets
of the world against the cheaplypro
duced goods pi low wage countries, dis
appears.
This home market theory of Labor
assumes that the foundation of a
stable and regular national trade Is a
stable and regular family wage. Re
ductions in wages must decrease the
amount of goods likely to be consumed
by our own people, and It increases the
amount that must be shipped abroad to
take its chance in the uncertain over
seas markets.
INCREASED WAGES
Increased wages increass the pur
chasing power of the home market,
stimulate trade, arid provide' einploy
ment. The high wage level in Austra
lia has not been responsible for the
existing depression, rather is it largely
due to the fact that wages have ceased
to circulate because workers have ceased
to be employed. And workers have
ceased to be employed because Austra
lia has relied too greatly upon the over
seas markets, , and too little upon . the
home market. We have been selling
too many of our goods abroad and too
few at home. We have based our
prosperity on the foreign markets in
stead of on the local markets.
Low wages mean poor customers for
the nation's goods, and a poQr founda
tion for steady industry. One would
think that employers paid the worker's
wages put of their own pockets, where
as the worker's wages are paid out of
the worker's production and from -no
other source'. Last year each worker
produced £350 in value above what he
received in wages.
One would think' the sensible thing
to do would be to give the workers more
of the wealth value they create so that
they might have increased purchasing
power, and, thus, become better and
bigger customers to all business con
cerns. Higher and not lower wages Is
the way of salvation; lower wages in
evitably lead jto worsened conditions and
trade stagnation.
THE CONTROL OF FINANCE
Our monetary system, under private
control, has failed the nation in this
time of trouble; it has, indeed, assisted
in bringing it on and intensifying it.
Two years ago four bags of wheat would
pay off £1 of our indebtedness; today
eight bags are required to perform the
same service. Here is the fundamen
tal weakness and danger of allowing
individuals to control the financial sys-.
tem for their own personal advantage.
When the national income shrinks —
not because less goods are produced or
less wealth created — but because of an
artificially forced alteration in the name
we give to its value, such alteration
being manipulated by the controllers
of the financial systems, the banker,
the financier, the money-lender, all take
larger shares without rendering any
Increased service, and there is, of course,
less for the remainder of the com
munity.
Such condition, if allowed to con
tinue, will inflict us with a condition of
permanent and ever-increasing unem
ployment. The private control of
finance has lamentably failed. It has
failed because it is manipulated in the
interests of the powerful few and against
the interests of the deserving many.
Credit and currency must be con
trolled by the nation for the nation's
good. Credit supply can then, be is
sued and maintained according to the
needs of- legitimate industry. It can,
as Mr. Wickens suggested, be used to
prevent any attempt at deflation. As
he also suggested, currency could be so
controlled as to reduce the value of
money to what it was when fixed obli
gations were incurred, in other words,
that money and commodity values should
be kept. even.
By this means prices would be kept
stable, alternating booms and slumps
would be abolished, and unemployment
largely wiped out. On this issue of the
national management of credit and
currency Labor is prepared to stake its
all.
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