"TINY TOWN."

Press, Volume LIV, Issue 16397, 17 December 1918, Page 7

"TINY TOWN."

TOWN PLANNING, CO-OPERATION

AND RELIGION

(From "The Age." Melbourne, November 23rd.)

About twelve years ago the "Age" told how certain Seventh Day Adventists made an exodus from Melbourne and settled on the banks of the Yarra at Warburton. These Adventists regarded tho Victorian metropolis much as Bunyan's Christian regarded the City of Destruction. As these particular Adventists were engaged in a publishing factory in on<> of those ''crowded central parts,'' they feared that, with the narrow street as playground, their children would grow up pale-faced and weedy. But more than the smoke-laden air and the tiny houses with tinier yards jammed close together,, they dreaded the "pleasures of the world." For them the footpaths, with their habitues, sometimes wanton, often profane ; the picture theatres, with their photo, plays, often silly, sometimes gross; the bars with their doors always open, were colleges in a university graduating in which their children would forget tho city beautiful.

In order that their employees and their children might escape perils, somo of them very real, others largely imaginary, the directors of the Adventist Signs of tho Times Publishing Co. bought land at Warburton. On a part of it they built a factory, on other parts they built houses for their employees, a church, a school house, a sanatorium. The settlement thus formed is less than a mile from the Warburton railway station, and is a little apart from Warburton proper. "Tiny Town," some of the Warburton folljf call the settlement, and, viewed from the opposite side of the hill, the settlement makes as pretty a picture as the wanderer is likely to find within fifty miles of Melbourne.

Though tho Adventists stumbled on a spot which would have charmed tho jovial monk of old as it charms the artist of to-day, it was on utilitarian grounds that the directors made their choice. There was pure water in abundance. That meant cheap electricity for motive power and for lighting in the factory, and surplus power for the lighting of the settlement. Householders are supplied with electricity at Is a quarter for each light. And tho light may be used from the early hour in tho morning at which the factory whistle sounds till 10 o'clock at night. For the most part the householders are employees of the company which built the nouses and sold them to the occupants on rent purchase term, but without profit. It is hardly necessary to remark that a company which goes into the bush on hygienic and moral grounds, which sells houses without profit, and which supplies electricity for tho lighting of a five-roomed house for £1 a year, is not run on ordinary commercial lines. The company has directors, but they are appointed, not by shareholders, but by the annual conference of the Adventist Church. There are no dividends; the profits are devoted to the enlargement of the factory, or to the mission and other agencies of the church. In tho first instance, the capital wee raised by voluntary subscription, and the company confines iteelt to the publication of literature setting forth the hygienic and theological idea of the Adventists. The employees are for the most part Adventists. So tho company had to face what at first sight would seem a rather heavy handicap, for his creed will not allow the Adventist to work on his Sabbath, which, like tho Jewish one, is from sunset on Friday to sunset on Saturday, and the law of the land will not allow him to work on Sunday. The factory runs for. the number of hours prescribed in tho Factories Act, so the workers get five rather long days at their task. "JVo have no whisper of labour troubles here," said Mr Millet, brother of the manager; "all our people consider it a privilege to be engaged in tho work." Judgine from a graph which was on the blackboard in a room the employees use as a chapel, class-room, and gymnasium, the company flourishes amazingly. From 1000 to 1909 there was a steady increase in tho sales. From 1909 on the output has increased enormously—from £14 ; 000 to £32,000 a year. And very little of this increase is due to the charging of higher prices for books and papers, as the main aim being tho making, not of profits, but of converts, advances in price havo_ been made very tardily,and very sparingly. The publishing house has its own agencies in the different States for the distribution of its literature.

The Adventists, of whom, according to the 1911 census, there are more than 6000 in Australia, are interesting 'because in their belief and in their methods they display such a remarkable blending of extreme simplicity with, exceptional shrewdness. With tho "pleasures of the world" they eschew animal food, alcoholic drinks, tobacco, tea, and coffee. Tliev attach the utmost importance to tho Keeping holy of the seventh day, as opposed to the ordinary Sunday; they dwell with an iteration the outsider finds wearisome on the immediate or very early coming of Christ in person to reign on the earth. But you study their factory and ask questions about the management of it, you find that their dynamos, presses, cameras, electrotyping plant are up to date. The latest American eliicioncy publications are on the shelves, and tho big store-room which is being added to tne building is to be connected by tramrliue with the various departments, so that all laboriqus carrying of printing paper, finished Etioets, books in the making may be eliminated. 'ihe church has its own medical men, so that the faithful may not be tempted to seek strength in stimulants or in forbidden foods; it has its own correspondence college, so that those of its members who live remote from an Adventist centre may pursue their studies at their own fireside. The missionaries of the churcb are trained as teachers, of course, but they are also trained in all that goes to tho makiug of the all-round man who can builu his own hut, tend hw own garden, see to his own clothes, pre.senoe for his own ailments, should episodes in a life lived far from the beaton track make it necessary that he fend for himself.

The Adventists who turned their backs on Melbourne avoided the mistake of tho Socialists who have founded settlements. They were men and women by ideas which to many seem visionary, so were the Socialists who formed colonies. But they were also men and women skilled in a given industry which they haa followed successfully for years, whereas the Socialists were of many occupations or of none, talkers who imagined that to build, to farm, to breed sr.eep and cattle come by nature. They avoided the fatal mistake which Labour made when it increased the Parliamentary salary to £500 a year, with free pass, free club house, and many pickings. They did not give their managers the big salary or the oasv life. The managers did not ask for them, because all concerned had that saving common sense which warns them that between the wife and daughters of the man with £12 a week and many perquisites and the wife and daughters of the man with £3 a week, with blank weeks in times of sickness, of strike or. commercial crisis there is a great gulf fixed, 'ihe shoo of the £12 a week, pius this and that, pinches in quite different fashion to the shoe of the £3 a week man, minus this and that. From which those who choose to dwell on the facts may

possibly deduce that the r j^! problem is not likely to be . co-operative effort till a re enthusiasm, an idea, induces prate about brotherhood to ac P : equal pay, but such approach o « wiil enable the glib talker an patient listener to live m st> e- - lar enough to make free social course possible.