Grey River Argus and Blackball News SATURDAY, JULY 15, 1922. WELL “DAMNED!”

Grey River Argus, 15 July 1922, Page 4

Grey River Argus and Blackball News

SATURDAY, JULY 15, 1922. WELL “DAMNED!”

Delivered every mo.ning in Gr< >uth K- -x He kitika. Dobson, Wallsend, Taylu, alle. Crouudun. Ngahere. Blackball, Nelson Creek. Brunner. Te Kingha kvtomanu. Poerua, Inchbonnie, Patara, Rum, Kaimata, Kotukv Moana, Aratika, Bunanga Dunollie, Cobden. Baxter's. Kokiri, Ahaura, Ikatn.--.iua. Stulwater. Waiuta, Reefton, Ross, Ruatapua, hfananui, Mari Hart, Waiho Gorge, Weheka, Rewanui. Otira, Iningahua Junction, Westport. Waimanftaroa, Denniston, Granity, Millerton. Ngakawau. Hectoc a SeddonvilLi, Cape Foulwmd. and Karam *3

The use of expletives by ecclesiastics in public is a rarity, but one of eminence “let himself go” the other evening when discussing some of the cancers that exist in present-day society. We refer to an address on the subject of “Social Hygienics” by Archbishop Julius. “As one who had worked among the slums,” he remarked, “he knew that one thing was necessary here, and that was changed conditions and decent homes.” “It

they say that’s bad political economy,” declared His Grace, “then I say Damn Political Economy!” And so say all who sec the evils of presentday capitalist society! Dr Julius referred to the alarming prevalence and spread of venereal disease, and said - in years gone by they would not find 1 doctors* clergymen, public men, women and others gathered candidly to i discuss and face the evil, in the way |we now were prepared to. He could i have said, too, that the need in days I gone by was far less than it now is, 1 1 hanks, particularly, to the evils of the war. Dr Julius said the social i conditions w-ere not yet so bad in New ’ Zealand as in some other countries, but before the war things were bad enough. Ono had only to look at ; the birth-rate, which meant that fashionable women would not be troubled with children. It meant that people ' did not want to be bothered with the expense of children. It meant, too, the use of instrumetns, which had bc- ; come so terribly common, tending to immorality in a very great degree. : Then again, it meant late marriages. I It was often said that a man should wait to marry till he could afford it. He did not believe a word of that. It was a man’s duty to marry when he reached manhood, and was fit to marry. It should not be said that a man should wait until he was advanced in life. His Grace might pardon the re- ■ mark that under capitalist society, a ' man has to face the probability of * family being in want. The fear of want is a big factor in race suicide. I We read how a society has been gaining vogue whose aim is not only early marriages but small families or none at all. They call themselves “Birthcontrollers.” They are a product of modern capitalism. Th-eir ideas are i inculcated by the modern environment i in which predatory monopolists have put on the masses the yoke of slavery, ' and they are without hope of a regen- : eration -except on lines which those ! who would fight venereal disease and i such evils must condemn. The legisI lation proposed for compulsory notifii cations of such diseases is aimed only |at the masses. The rich can buy an •escape from it. It is as clear as day- . light that small wages and unemploy- : ment among both men and women are primarily responsible, not only for a 1 great deal of the increase in venereal disease, but for the degradation of the relations between the sexes. When it comes to the head of a society claiming the status of high respectability

:i ] vrx-al i ng as the virtue of '.sexual purity the practice of marital sterility, there is surely a nigger in the woodpile It is the idle millionaire, who

in his idleness has set > bad example, and to keep idle and rich, robs his fellows. It is easy to see that this advocacy of small families, the 4‘prudential check,” or “race-suicide,” to give it some of its varied designations, has the benediction of many highlyplaced rich people who are to-day telling Britain’s workers they must go and find a home in another country. Human beings are not national assets or desirable things in themselves when regarded from the standpoint of sqch people. They are not nearly so earnestly sought as money. The poor are having their few remaining liberties curtailed at every turn, and if capitalist apologists, like the “birthcontrollers” get a free hand no working man will be able to call his shirt or his soul his own. As G. K. Chesterton once remarked, these people, to keep a slum-child’s head clean, would cut off its hair, in preference to giving it a washing! The open advocacy of birth-control is meant as a prehide to legal enactments to enforce it! Then, it will not perhaps bo legitimate for any man to claim more wages than will keep three people! Much good may come from judiciously instructing children near the age of puberty as to the hell that follows misuse of their natural powers; it may help them in their later struggle to go straight; but, with Dr Julius, we must say Damn the Political Economy that breeds the slums and poverty, disease and death that capitalists to-day try to explain away by blaming the victims of their own inhumanity!