LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
[Letters of the length of one of our leading paragraphs are often more read, and therefore more effective, than those which JILL treble the space.] CAPITAL AND LABOUR.
ITO ME EDITOR Or THE " SPECTATOR. '
SIB, —Many speeches are being made and articles written on the position of Capital and Labour, nearly all of which ignore the simple fact that although Capital knows that it cannot get on without Labour, Labour has yet to learn that it cannot get on without Capital. Only- a few days ago a Labour candidate said : "Labour is the goose which lays' the golden eggs." It is not. Capital is the goose and Labour is the food. It is true that the goose cannot go on producing eggs without the food, but it is quite certain that the food cannot produce any eggs without the goose. There is also the misuse of the term "capitalist," which is generally made to refer to an individual of great wealth. With few exceptions, industrial concerns are carried on by companies working under statutory powers or the Limited Liability Acts, and the large majority of the shareholders have only a small
amount invested Besides this, every workman who has a War Bond or a 15s. 6d. War Certificate is a capitalist, and so is every workman who has a table and some chairs or a bag of tools. Who- ever has the capital, it must have been obtained by work, and although no doubt it is far better that the person having it should have earned it, that only affects the person to whom it has been given by the one who did earn it. As Lord Leverhulme has fre- quently pointed out, the only practical course for Capital and Labour to adopt is to abandon the feeling of mutual distrust and- to unite in effecting increased production with decreased cost while maintaining a high rate of wages and a high standard of
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