6 DECEMBER 1963, Page 13

SIR,--1 have read with much interest and considerable sympathy Mr.

Nicholas Davenport's articles on the Split Society, but there is one statement in his third instalment that requires some qualification.

There he writes that 'the average rich man

virtually doubled his capital in the ten years to April, 1961, without having to exercise his brains.' A little later, in dealing with increases in workers' earnings, he is careful to balance them with quota- tions from the Consumer Price Index, as a measure of the inflation and devaluation of the sterling pound. Surely some similar qualification should have been attached to the statement of the capitalists' gains, which are purely a response by capital values to the same influences, acting under the lash of the take- over bid.