THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 280, 26 November 1938, Page 8

THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS.

EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY. (To the Editor.) Mar I lay down a few socio-economic truth* especially for the consideration of the Knights of Labour on the waterfront. As an inquiry into that particular form of social service is to be ]iel<l, 110 reference will be made to the late unfortunate hold-up. further than savin» that it never should have occurred in a socialdemocratic State. Both masters and men sav that, and yet it did (m-nr. That word used "masters,"' is an O. Henry dodge to make employees who proudly announce themselves as workers sit up ;tmi take notice. We are ' all workers, from the Governor-General down to the newsboy. Each tills a place—more or less efficiently—in a costly and cumbersome economic system. Wasteful, too. and yet the competitive system cannot Ik- said to have done so badly, so far as material things go when one considers, it has all been dosie in under a hundred years. In retrospect, to anvone # who lias turned eighty. that is not 6uch a Inner time. What this progress cost in human suffering. because it caused much of that is the blemish of the sy.-tem. A denial of 'the right to work for a subsistence and the individual ownership of land are the causes of the unequal distribution of wealth, not the difference of ability between men. Given equal opportunity, the children of the poor canvmake as pood a showing as tlie children of the rich. It is this basic injustice which weighs the '•workers*' down, and which must be removed before they can rise to letter conditions. While they remain all hope of betterment by increasing wages is misplaced. Wages are not the amount of money one receives, but the thing# it will buy. This incontrovertible truth is fully realised by the "have-nots"' and there should be a gradual resumption of this wealth which the present owners have no moral ri-arht to possess, because they did not create it. The community did. and to them it rightly belongs. But wealth does not of itself confer happiness: a millionaire is not a thousand times happier than one who ha« that number of pounds, and neither may have the satisfaction in life which comes to the man who lias the secret of happiness within himself—the only place where real enjovment can be found. ALEXANDER FRASER.