"THIRD CLASS."

Bush Advocate, Volume XXI, Issue 96, 21 October 1908, Page 3

"THIRD CLASS."

EXPERIENCES ON AN EMI- ' GRANT SHIP. PROBLEM OV MODERN SOCIETY ■Tin* Roy. .1. K. Archer publishes some intorosting .impressions of the sea voyage to New Zealand in the Grimsby News. He travelled thirdclass, and the voyage confirmed him in the opinion that the third-class passenger is the problem of modern society. "On land," he says, "every third-class passenger who buys a railway ticket pays for his own ride, and helps to pay for the ride of the first-class passenger, who in, some cases at kjist looks down upon him with lofty coiatemgt. .^Apparently it is the samerSntho^a. ' Certainly it ia so on this vessel, or the whole of the passengers are carried at a loss. The/ first-class passengers are so few thai they could not be conveyed at a profit. Yet, speaking broadly, and Without; the least desire to complain, everyone 2 can see that afloat as well as ashore the, entire structure of ■filings is built in the interest of the nrstrclass passenger. He is a 'gentleman.' ;TJie third-class passenger is only an~ 'emigrant. 3 This has to be altered. Indeed, it is in process of alteration. The change, however, is fax. too slow. Nowhere, surely, is the essential conversatism of Britain more manifest than aboard ship. When will our great shipping companies learn the simple lesson that Board Schools, and other schools, and many evolutionary forces have made the third-class passenger of today. ;a i very different person f rom what he was, fifty years ago? For--^tunateljr the lesson is, in some measure, being driven into their heads hy the action of Continental competitors. May that action be intensified. Better still, may Great Britain, who has her own navy, soon have an ocean service of her own! That is the real cure. As soon as the third-class passenger in a body demands that cure he will get it. " When he gets it he will be able to give it effective application." Mr Archer says that on the voyage to New Zealand. he was asked to take the affirmative in a debate on socialism in" the third-class saloon. He consented ; but, strange to say, among the whole of the passengers there was not a soul who. could seriously take the negative. Several offered to take it in a sporting way; but their offer , was declined; and eventually t^e -occasion was turned inio a lecture on. Socialisjn, with v questions or remarks to followi "The fact is," says /Mr Archer, '\ "that every man amongst us is a Socialist of a more or less pronounced type. This promises /well for New Zealand. British Socialists are often urged by their friends who are individualists to clear out, and try and establish a Socialist State elsewhere. Some of us are acting oh their , advice, and are hoping to make New Zealand the ideal, and the envy of the economic world."