TRACTS FOR THE TIMES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 98, 28 April 1933, Page 6

TRACTS FOR THE TIMES.

CHANGING MEN. | (By PRO BONO PUBLICO.) Everyone who has lived his life in the country is convinced that the character o£ city folk is changing. We have visitors of all occupations and nil ages. The children, as jou would cxpcct, talk almost exclusively of home and school, and more, I think, of school than of home. And thfy make conversation about people, teachers and schoolmates, footballers cricketers, and so on. Tho college students, girls and young men both, seem similarly to have their outlook bounded by tho collegc walls. No one seems to make an effort to relate their book learning to the real facts of life; or if the effort is made, it ie not very successful. But when the young men go into business a rather striking development occurs. It is not business of which they talk. When they leave the shop or office or warehouses door the business is left behind them. Not one in a hundred seems to think of business as part of real life. Very many years ago a Polish Jew, who spoke little English and spoke it badly, used to come round the country with a van, selling drapery, boots and clothing. He and his brother knew only a few words of Englfsli when they came to New Zealand. They rented a small shop in Auckland, and one brother looked after the shop while the other went about the country looking for business. They used to open at six in the morning, and would close as late as eleven at night, so long as there was tho chance of a stray customer. In about twenty years they were both independent. For thoße men business was all of their lives. They may have been an extreme case, but at that time men used to talk about business and business possibilities and about their work, and they used to boast about how much they could tlo in a day. If they learned to sing, or play the fiddle, or went to the theatre, or went out fishing or shooting, it was always as an "extra." Their lives centred in their business. About the only other thing they took really seriously was politics. The men of to-day may take their business just as seriously as their fathers did but they don't show it. Our visitors nowadays will tell us about their golf or their cricket, their shooting and fishing, their billiards, their rowing and tennis, the picture shows, their radio sets, the dances they go to anything but the business by which they earn their living. And as for politics they will talk for a minute or two in rather a scornful way, but not one in a hundred talks with any knowledge. It is only when we question them and draw them out that they reveal their feelings about the work they do. Whether this is good or bad I cannot say. But that a change has occurred is positive, and I think possibly it is due to the enormous multiplication of amusements and opportunities for amusements. And another change that has occurred is that whereas young and old used to have to make their own entertainment, now they have entertainment made for them. And I am ■sure that this development is not a gain. ,