THE WORLD OF "CITY PRESS" from Pat Jordan
On a recent visit to London I came across a paper which, although it has be going for 100 years, I had not read before. City Press heads its editorial column: "Free Trade - Sound Money - No Coercion" and contains some of the most frankly right wing material I have seen for a long time. It caters for the City and perhaps the best idea of its readership is given by item on the front page which, in big letters on a shaded background, urged: "All liverymen should go to Guidhall on Tuesday at noon to elect the Lord Mayor." Maybe I shouldn't have been so surprised after all! A few quotations will give an idea of the temper of the paper:
{ Full employment will kill the £ - Money Matters by S.W. Alexander
St
wo
"All political parties at this election are promising the electors a continuance of "full employment". On doing so they are making a promise that cannot be fulfilled, We are going to have unemployment again....It is unquestionably true that a continuance of the full employment policy...means that the pound must collapse. The reason being that government is printing more and more money to keep people in employment, regardless of whether ther activities are profitable °F not..esince April 1, 1911, £104 million had been provided by the government to finance work for 126,900...Clearly, if such enterprises had been thought worthwhile by private enterprise they would have been carried out without government assistance,
"Elsewhere we find authoritative statements that in a number of industries in this country from 3 to 5 times as many men are required for a given operation as in the United States...These and other instances reveal that British industry if efficiently operated could perform with far fewer workers. Indeed, there are circumstances in which we would have a million unemployed. No one wants to see that but what we have to recognise is that if we are to earn our keep in the world...we have to produce with the hizhest efficiency...O0f course at all times there can be full employment - for people at a price and whether we like it or not we shall in due time have to free the market so that we know what prices should be. When that happens we shall find enough people to work on the buses end tubes and in domestic service" (sic) "and for a hundred and one other jobs now starved of workpeoplee.cee.
"The right way to go about it would be to withdraw all the privileges from the sectional interests which have prospered innorpequence of those privileges. A fall in stock market prices would be sufficient to eliminate a considerable part of the excessive profits of which the Labour Party complains and free imports would provide that discipline of capital and labour which is badly needed
u eee (Businessmen) Pay attention an editorial 3
" eeeetne great mass of people who are wnable to judge for themselves are influenced always by tiny minorities. In modern terms these are minorities of the left and of the right. These minorities are the most important people in the country...in spite of the vast quantity of information now provided through the press and radio a relatively small number of people have the integrity and judgement to decide what is the right course of action. So in-these days we urge that businesSmen should take an interest in politics not only at elections but all the time...Wisdom is confined to the few but given support they will multiply greatly and secure the support through their om example and integrity of the many who do not and cannot understand." Postscript: I don't suppose anyone will be surprised to learn that in its "Press Probe" it said that the Tory Party was "in all respects ..better than ..e. Labour"