Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit SATURDAY, MARCH 11, 1950. EFFICIENCY

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 70, Issue 125, 11 March 1950, Page 4

Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit SATURDAY, MARCH 11, 1950. EFFICIENCY

There is need for efficiency in every department of life, in the school, the home, the office and the factory. Without it there can be no success. It was recently stated that South Africa was becoming' efficiency conscious, and this statement induced a South African paper to expound the need, and in the course of doing so it stated a number of points which everyone in every country would do well to heed. It can be said, even of this country, that there is ample scope for improved efficiency in all sectors of economy. “Ask a man,” wrote Hume the Philosopher, “why he exercises? He will answer ‘because I desire to keep my health.’ If you them inquire Why he desires health, he will readily reply ‘because I find sickness painful.’ If you push your inquiries further and desire a reason why he hates pain, it is impossible that he can give any. This is an ultimate end.” “It is not,” wrote Adam Smith, the classical economist, “from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer or the baker, that we expect our dinner but from their regard to their own self-interest.' Efficiency in every department of life will give more pleasure and less painr and more stimulation o'f self-interest. No man desires to subsist on a handful of rice.- No man need do so if he studies efficiency of the worker that is the driving force in raising the standard of living. It is true to say that a worker would prefer one hour of labour to two, and two shillings of wages to one, but to secure this there must be the greatest degree of-efficiency. One has only to look at nature to gain same idea of efficiency. Hei works -are a model of efficiency. Nothing she does is lethargic; she is perfect in every department. Abuse her, and her destruction is equally as thorough. If the ideal of efficiency could be inculcated into every walk of life, success would be much more marked than it is to-day. Efficiency is the answer to all our. problems, but do not think 'it is easy to obtain efficiency. It is, on the contrary, extremely difficult. The reward for efficiency goes down to posterity. It "cannot be measured in one generation. It goes on forever,, and like the snowball, grows greater as it rolls forward, and as is does so it provides more time for leisure. 1