The Evening Star SATURDAY, JUNE 25, 1921.

Evening Star, Issue 17697, 25 June 1921, Page 4

The Evening Star SATURDAY, JUNE 25, 1921.

There is nothing academic —in tho old narrow sense about An Industrial modern professors of Departure. economics. The pro-

blems of the day are their problems, the Ufo of tho whole community their life. One professor in New Zealand of what used to bo the “dismal science ” brings his trained mind and expert knowledge to bear in explaining the errors of Marxianism to an audience greater than could ever be assembled in any lecture room; another has analysed Budgets; a third gave valuable assistance as a member of an important industrial commission ; still another has held up the arbitration system before the public, and invhed them to judge it without prejudice. All of them have followed good British examples, and Professor Pringle, with the latest knowledge, directly gained, of British ideas and economic movements to commend him as a lecturer, is as much a member of tin new age. It would be a pity if the value of the knowledge of a professor of economics had to be limited to his students, who must wait before they will be able to apply it to the best advantage.Tho address which Professor Pringle gave on Thursday night before tho Accountants’ Society on ‘ Trade Parliaments In Industry,’ like other public addresses he has delivered, obviously contained food for thought for tho whole community, and a real debt must be felt to the professor tor the wide view ho has taken of his office.

In days past this country used to pride itself on the lead which it gave, or believed it gave, to the older nations in regard to industrial legislation and experiments. It was natural, perhaps, that it should be a pioneer. Experiments are more easily made in a new country, where they can be performed in a vacuum, so to speak, with small risk of anything very desperate happening if they go wrong, than in the countries whero conditions are more complex, traditions at once older and stronger, and tlr ramifications of all kinds

of conflicting interests more numerous and more profound. Experiments were made, certainly, most of -which were good. If wo were not ahead of all coqr. tries in social and industrial legislation we were "easily ahead of Great Britain, with its extremes of social conditions, and even its limited franchise till a fow years ago. But tho old zeal for leading the way in social developments seems to have been lost to New Zealand in tho last dozen years. A Conservative Government, which copies British Acts with no ideas, apparently, for initiating anything on its own account, may explain the change so far as legislation is concerned, but it goes further than that. Tho first thought suggested by Professor Pringle’s lecture on the objects and the working of the Whitley Councils scheme at Home must be that of a great industrial experiment, which is still extending, several years after its commencement, in Great Britain, of which tho highest hopes were formed and are still held, but which is still without its counterpart in New Zealand even on tho smallest scale. There has been talk enough in this country of the necessity of bringing Labor and Capital closer together; but tho aspirations born o', war time have been barren, for the most part. Scarcely any attempt has been made by either side to improve their relationship. One might think that tho idea had ceased to exist, in most quarters, that it could ever be improved. In this matter, •at least, Great Britain has been more radical than New Zealand, In most countries tho cry of a large section of workers has been for-some share in the control of industries of which they provide the labor. Tho Whitley system not give workers any actual control of businesses by which it has been adopted, but the joint councils of workers and employers do afford a means by which they can come to know and understand each other better. The worker can exercise an influence on the conduct of the industry ofwhich he is a part; he is helped to take a greater interest in it; and he learns something of the difficulties of its control. It is claimed that a new atmosphere is created by tho consultations of workers and employers in which wage differences, when they arise, are more easily settled. Wo understand that these Whitley Councils have been formed now in about seventy British trades. Doubtless tho Old Country has been less conservative than New Zealand and more ready to make changes in the industrial sphere because there was more need for them there, and because it was more shaken by the war, but it seems strange that not one industry in this country has been tempted to make trial of such an important scheme. Even a general conference between the representatives of Labor and Capital bus been judge! impracticable in Now Zealand, except on the smallest scale. It is not a record that prompts pride for any high spirit of enterprise or for setting; an example to the world.