WHY WORK?

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 1263, 15 December 1920, Page 3

WHY WORK?

i i...i ... itu-.it.uii »iis nun .Mid i-- maintained by hard work seems to have been forgotten by some of our ion temporaries. Plenty of nation- :»nd races are l:< uing along with a minimum of effort: (>ut tin v arc not the one- that count in iln- world. Mental and physical labor is absolutely necessary, not only to advance us in the struggle for betterment but even to keep us from slipping back. lu an article contributed to the American Machiiii-t K. 11. Fish, who writeunder the pen-nan,t of ••Entropy." j.-k the question that ••••■ copy him in using as n title. Hi- answer is that it is the worker who succeeds, individually a-u.-ll as collectively. l)l two men one of whom works n little more than ho is required 10 do and the other a Tittle less, or even ju-t as much, it is the former who hold- his job. who saves mouey. builds up a home—lives a real. i uiitiuilous lilt* instead of one in scrap-. Tlii- community rewards, and always «i!l reward, the producer, be his product objects or ideas. Its non-workers it may tolerate for a while, but they are m> part ot its permanent machinery. .-.■'.- "Entropy.' "In these piping times of p<a<e. when every one is thinking ot everything except his duty, and r. luu foremen .Lire not fire a workman lor tear ot starting a strike that will • !>-! a great sum of money, the question i- i:> many men's mind-, 'Why vvork'r' Many arc answering the question bx not working any more than they fail help, with the re-tilt that time" hangs heavy on their hands, the eight-hour uav seems longer than the ten-hour djy ever did. and the eost ot living mounts taster and faster. Jim what arc the incentives to work hard- Individual effort brings neither additional money nor thanks, but only the disfavor of other workmen. The only man who works in the real sense of "the word today is the far-sighted chap who can imagine the timo when he wants » job and when a lot of other people want the same job. 110 is a man who understands that at present, we are only kept in n stable posit ion by spinning around like a top. and that when we begin to whirl only ever so little more slowly wo are hound to tumble. When tho crash come-, and shops have to let men go, they always retain what they call their •organisation.' if it is a possiblo thiii};. By this they mean that essential minimum of men who are profitab'o and whoso morale, instilled into the green men whom they will pick up when the tide tunes, will build a harmonious force. This does not necessarily mean that they keep their most capable men, but the most dependable ones." •Just how good an investment is it for a man to do twice the work now that is necessary to hold the job? auks Mr Fish. No one knows precisely, but for a long time we have run on* cyclos of alwut ten of twelve years of which less than half have been spent in real prosperity and nearly all the rest of th«s time spent in climbing painfully out of the slough into which wo havo been precipitated almost overnight. Ho goes on: "The fair-weather man has had good wage-; less than half of the time suite the Civil War, and ho has had starvation wages the ro,t of it. He lias had practically half wages for the past 50 years. The man who has stuck to the ship through thick and thin has had just as good wages during good times, and in proportion to the cost of living he has had moro than good wages tho rest of the time. U e is at least twice as well off.''