Evening star., 1931-12-24
Higghlights ON the Wide World
Excerpts From Newspapers of Other Lands

r RISH INDEPENDENT, Dublin
A suggestion that a huge scheme
of road reconstruction should be
/ undertakep in the Free State with
the primary object of providing
work for unemployed agricultural work.
ers. and that the scheme should be
financed by a 100000 loan on the
road fund, was made at meeting OF
the Roads Committee of the Meath
County Council.
**
Overproduction Held
Depression Cause.
japan Times, Tokio.-A strange
muddle this, into which we have fallen
of late! People starving because We
have produced too much food, going
about in rags because we grow too much
cotton, barefooted because we have
made too many shoes, sleeping in door
ways and barns because we have built
too many housest Manufactured prod
ucts stored mountain high without a
market, while millions lack the common
decencies of life!
A gloomy picture? Yes, but fair
one, plain for all to see. Not so plain
is the cause Of i: all. One hears many
explanations production. These are
I doubt, but none of them explains it nor
all of them together. The real cause,
1 am convinced, lies much deeper, in
an organic malady virus in the blood
stream that poiSons the entire system.
In the large, the whole economic
process of production and dlstributf0
is carried on by just two groupS-thoSe
who furnish the labor and those who
furnish the capital. The first group
gets its return from wages and salaries,
the second from profits and dividends
But the only way the second group can
get profits is by selling back to the first
group the goods the latter have pro-
tsuced for more than the cost of pro-
duction. Suppose, for example. that
capital expends hundred million dol
lars for raw materials, wages and sal
| aries in the production and distribution
of certain goods. These goods must be
| sold at profit-they must bring $685.
100000 or $3.50 100000.
Obviously, however, the consumers
have no more to buy with than they
have received. And since the goods
| they have produced are now priced al
| $50, 900, 900, there is a $4,000 900 sur
plus which they cannot absorb. In thi;
| fashion q surplus of unsold commodi-
les accumulates year after year, not
because people do not need them, but
because they are unable to buy then
all. There can be only one result. Al
last business slows down, factories close
wages are reduced, employees are turned
OF and industry goes into a tail spin o.
| depression. From this vicious circle i
can recover only after large part O.
the accumulated surplus has been dis
sipated-either given away, thrown OF
some other market or sold at bargain
prices which sacrifice the surplus values
That Is exactly the course to which
we are now being driven, to checl
the present decline and start again or
the upgrade. Prices Of all commoditie!
have gone lower and lower and vast &C
cumulations OF surplus value In tn
hands OF few are beginning SLOWLY
to be distributed In the form Of relic
work and charity.
| If this analysis Is correct, 1t seem
evident that 1t Is this element Of profi
or exploitation, which is the root Of ou
disease-the poison that vitiates tn,
whole economic process. 1t Is q sort o
narcotic, without which industry IL
its present form cannot live; but which
like alcohol stimulates only to stupefy
paralyze, and at last destroy.
| \
DepIore Suspension
OF Spanish Newspaper.
A B c, Madrid.-The director genera
Of national security announced recentl.
that publication Of the periodical La
Correspondence Militar has been sus,
pended. Tre cause Of the suspensio,
W. garns0 md derosatosy account