mous old English firm
of Levinstein--Messrs. Levinstein of Manchester--to be considered. This
"all-British" concern has not done badly out of the terrible situation
through which we are slowly toiling. While mere vulgar English Tommies
have been dying in the trenches or have returned incapacitated to
England--to find that their country cannot afford them a
pension--Levinsteins have been pocketing several thousands of that
country's cash. Levinsteins' are dye-makers, and in 1914-15 they made a
profit of L80,000 _on a capital of_ L90,000: a profit large enough to
make the mouth of the deceased usurer Kirkwood dry with envy. But, while
our legislature passed laws to restrain the usurer in his exactions, the
"war profiteer" has no restriction placed on him. His workmen can, in
certain cases, be fined or sent to prison if they absent themselves from
work, and hundreds have been proceeded against under the Defence of the
Realm Act. But the profiteer himself is immune! It is childish to say
that the State can recover half of the profit he has wrung from the
country's necessity. What right has he to the other half? In the case of
Levinstein, this L80,000 profit enables the company to pay 14-1/2
years' preference dividend, to distribute a dividend of 30 per cent on
its ordinary shares, and to write off L21,000 for depreciation! It is
merely fatuous to pretend, or to endeavour to pretend, that the
appropriation of half these profits squares matters between the
community and the British firm in question.

As with Levinstein, so with other firms. Messrs. Cammell, Laird & Co.
averaged profits of L146,000 for the three years before the war. Since
last year those profits have risen to L237,000. Those profits, of
course, are subject to war profits taxation. But most manifestly that
taxation is utterly inadequate. So it is in the case of Messrs. W.
Beardmore, whose profits rose from L184,000 (three years' pre-war
average) to L219,000; of the British Westinghouse Co., which rose from
L56,000 to L151,000; and of Beyer Peacock's, which increased from
L57,000 to L109,000.

In all these cases the deduction of 50 per cent by the Government is
entirely inadequate and utterly misleading. It is at once an admission
that the firm in question has no right to amass huge profits out of the
welter and tragedy of the European War, and that the State is content to
stultify itself by surrendering the other half.

Many of these profits have been made