OUR SYDNEY LETTER.

Bush Advocate, Volume XXII, Issue 141, 20 June 1910, Page 7

OUR SYDNEY LETTER.

{OWN CORRESPONDENT.] . SYDNEY, JUNE 10, 1910

THE FOOTBALL. Mr Wade's presessional speech lias been likened to a football. The manner in winch it is being kicked about gives some appropriateness to the simile. The strong point of his Majesty's Opposition ail over his Dominions is that no criticism can hurt it. Nothing that can be said or done against it can deprive it of its position. Governments on the other hand having done a great deal that is concrete and proposing to do a great deal more are exposed to damaging criticism from both sides —from their own supporters as well as from their avowed opponents. All that the Opposition need do is to cry "Yah" in varying degrees of loudness and shrillnes of pitch—sufficiently loud if possible to drown the voices of the other side. This is much easier than framing a policy Avhich shall deal adequately with many delicate matters ef administration, and which shall be so. generally acceptable as to admit of being actually carried into effect. When statesmen of the old school—as for instance, Parkes and Robertson—-were opposed to one another this advantage on the side of the Opposition was sufficient to bring about a pretty regular change of Government. At every successive general election./ To-day the situartion is entirely different. The Opposition is committed to so many revolutionary principles- which seem to strike at the ■ very roots ■ of ? civilisation and the operation of these principles in early times has proved so disastrous that to many minds the choice is not between one statesman and another, but between the.fryingpan and the fire. Conditions in the cooker are readily susceptible of drastic criticism, but conditions in the fire —what would they be? Undoubtedly considerations of this kind are exercising a restraining influence and attacks from avowed supporters are not so frequent or so formidable as is often the case. DESTRUCTIVE CRITICISM.

A keen observer can readily gather some useful hints for destructive criticism from present happenings. In the first place it must be remembered that measures are like men in this respect, that none are wholly bad and none are wholly good. Like the curate's egg at his Bishop's breakfast table they are good or bad in spots—more or less numerous as the case may be. Unlike the curate, the critic, if in opposition must dwell solely on the bad.. The good, whether in intention or act must be wholly ignored, or if recognised at ail must be regarded through the scope of the strongest magnifying power available. If not sufficiently ugly distortion is always available. If there, is still a deficiency of repulsiveness then the ingenuity of invention must -be called into play. The. establishment of sound principles of Government is all very Aveli in its way, but an indispensable preliminary is that the wicked people who keep the destructive critic out of office shall be displaced. He, and he alone, is able to run the show according to his own idea of how it ought to be done. Therefore the present obstruction must be removed, and in order to remove it, it must be presented in an odious light, for the end jutifies the means, and one can't have omelettes without breaking eggs. These short and simple rules have' the merit of being equally available for ail kinds of controversy in which victory irrespective of veracity of a strict character is the object sought. It is 'dear to the ambitious whether his ambition is exercised on social, municipa,l or political objects. But as its power is so well-known, and so generally exercised there is no need to say any more about it.

A RADIUM BANK. The State Government is about to add to tlio obligatoins under which it has already placed x\s by establishing a radium bank. Mr Fisher is not to have all the glory attaching to State banking. In ten years' time we may be looking at both the State and the Federal undertaking in a very different light. But ten years is .a long time, and so long as they serve the present turn, what does it matter ? Radium is one of the very numerous substances which is thought to offer a possible cure for cancer. Very little is accurately known either about the nature of cancer or the curative virtues of radium, but (like everything else) it is a wonderful substance, and (like innumerable other things) it may justifiably be tried in hopeless cases with a tolerable certainty that they will not ail x 3l " o ve mortal, and that the prolongation of life may therefore be as reasonably attributed to the radium as to anything else. Some day a devoted statistician will tell us how many cures for cancer have been heralded by a great flourish of trumpets, and have passed into the limbo of the forgotten. The last, as long as influential people find it to their interest to puff it, is always an excexstion to the others; but by and by the most solid buttresses crumble, and jt goes the way of all the rest. But anyhow radium, being the latest, is also the most fashionable panacea of the hour and consequently it confers some of its lustre on all who are connected with it. It is certainly a tribute to the versatility of Australian statesmen that they are able to keep so manj T irons in the fire, or perhaps one should say so many balls in the air—at the same time. No longer children, they have far outgrown the wisdom of the old saw, "One thing at a time," and that done well. There

is always hope for ' the versatile. Why? Some time or other they may take it into their heads to cultivate concentration as sedulously as they now seem to pursue dissipation of energy. DECENTRALISATION. Decentralisation is to be. one of the 'most prominent topics at the Farmers' and Settlers' Conference, and no wonder. It means a great deal more than ready access to port. Every additional port opened means not only the opening of another gate to the world's market, but it also means the opening of a new market in itself. If the whole of Australasia (seaports included) were utilised to the fullest extent reasonably possible, how quickly stupid restrictions and shackles would be discarded. There is that tired feeling, it is true, to be got rid of, but nothing seems better calculated to dispel it than a healthj' interest in local self-government. The gatherings of the farmers and country storekeepers are always welcomed in Sydney because they bring in a whiff of fresh air from the country 'where the wealth which makes Sydney so prosperous' really originates. The farmers intend, if possible, to increase the powers of the Shire Councils. They would even give them power to construct light railways, And why not? Could anything be more deadening than th epresent dependance on the central Government for everything of the kind? There is also a demand for extensive resumptions to facilitate closer settlement. The trouble in this connection is that the moneary resources of the Government have their limit, and in view of the many other demands upon them, it "is not easy to see how their operations can be sufficiently extensive to meet the requirements of the case. Still the discussion of these important questions helps to elucidate them and thus to bring about a better state o faff airs.

UNEMPLOYMENT. Mr Fisher has had to meet a deputation who complained of intermittent employment. Insurance against this disaster was suggested, and the Prime Minister was duly sympathetic accordingi3\ The dailies, glad to have something to discuss these dull times, have spread themselves upon the topic with enthusiasm. There are still one or two important factors which claim attention. Unemployment is obviously due to excess of those who desire to be employed. When there are more men than are needed, some of them are necessarily idle. Normally the result then is that they reduce their demands. Employers are tempted, and a much larger number find work than Avould otherwise be the case. Incidentally also the drop in wages affords incontrovertible evidence that the labor market in this particular locality is overstocked, and others who might be inclined to go there are warned. The process, however, seems too harsh for ! this humanitarian age. . We have decreed that whether the labor market is overcroAvded or not, ail who are employed shall receive a living wage, computed on a liberal scale. Obviously, then, one great safeguard against unemployment and a very effective check upon overcorwding is removed. Equally obviously the difficulty of insuring against the calamity is immensely increased. Even Mr Fisher, with his sweeping majority, in both Houses of Parliament, could not insure work to 125,000 men in Sydney or Melbourne if there was only work for 100,000. Moreover, it must be remembered that every advance in wages diminishes the number of those who are able and willing to employ labor. If the Prime Minister is going to take on insurance of this kind, he will find that his path will bristle with difficulties which have been gratuitously and unnecessarily created, as well as with those which unavoidably attach to so benevolent an undertaking.

PASS IT ON. A deputation of builders and contractors complained the other day to Mr Wade of the losses to which they were exposed by reason of alterations in wages aAyarded by Wages Boards during the currency of existing contracts. Sometimes a contract takes two or three years to execute. The price was based on the rate of wage then current, and three-fourths of the work may consist of labor. An arbitrary advaucc in wages, therefore, may virtually confiscate the whole of the contractor's belongings. On© instance was cited in which a contractor had already lost £2OOO by this cause. The only remedy that could be suggested Avas "pass it on." Mr Wade recommended contractors to put a clause in their tenders specifying that- any such advance iii wages shall be made good by the contractor's customer. He was promptly confronted with the query, "Will the Government which draws up its own contracts set the example?" In any case the expedient only shunts the unlooked-for disaster on to the shoulders of the customer, who may be less able to bear it than the builder. As a means of discouraging too sanguine enterprise, the attempt to regulate wages by law seems to be admirably efficacious. It is questionable, however, whether the benefitthus conferred compensates for the interference with legitimate freedom or for the general uncertainty and lack of confidence with which matters industrial must necessarily tend to become shrouded. A misguided person named Wordsworth once wrote: "We must be free or die, who speak the tongue that Shakespeare spake, the faith and morals hold which Milton held." Evidently the amiable poet had never contemplated the amazing possibilities which Englishspeaking Australia held in store.