WHY NOT VICTORIANISM ?

Hawera Star, Volume L, 29 November 1930, Page 16

WHY NOT VICTORIANISM ?

A WRITE®, in an evening pager has ; made a. humble appeal for a return j to the old virtues of hard' work, thrift, , ami discipline, writes Thomas Burke in the “'.Sunday News.'' I don’t mean that we are ever likely to the fundamental things. A few years' ago his appeal would have, passed unheeded, but "there are ■signs to-day of general dissatisfaction with the .present mode, of life, and it ' may be that there will be a move back to return to the grim broadeloth gospel of 'Samuel 1 Smiles, James Mill, Isaac Watts, 'Martin Tapper, and their fictional counterpartsI—Mr 1 —Mr 'Gradgrind, •Mr Fairchild, .Mr Barlow —but wet do seem, to lie realising that the deep { earnestness of the Victorians' was not j entirely laughable. 'With the end! of the war people of jail classes appeared to think that life | owed! them “a good time'' Duties , were regarded as nothing but dreary ' fagging, and the ideal of everybody was, at all costs, to have a good: time. ' Hence, short working hours for every i class, much scamping in even those short hours, cars ami ino t*w- cycles, ■ , nightly dancing, cocktails lin'd all sorts of foolish spending. 1 But “good times’' merely come ami go. and: leave nothing. Tonies' are useful in their place, but' they are not nourishing, and l we are beginning to discover that we are getting very little out of our good' times. Indeed, the general state of the country has been the despair of the last three Hove Mini on ts.

No one- class is wholly to blame for this. Tf the workers are anxious to do as little asi possible, the employers, with their afternoon golf and their long week-ends, sot the example.

All. hare been lured away from' duty by the dream: of getting money without- working far it. and Stock Exchange speculation has spread in the last ten years from the rich to the poor. But the bottom, has now fallen out of that, and a. long- run of “good times’’ is beginning to show its uselessness in exhausted nerves and empty pockets. There is really very little fun' in having a continuous good time and being continuously hard up. as most people —in London, at any rate —are to-day.

A Return to Good Old Virtues

There is another matter upon which a change of opinion' can be .perceived. One of the most, notable feature® of this century lias been the decay of the family. It was Victorian, and therefore. without any examination, it must go; besides, you could not have a good time, and rear and educate a family, too. But now there is a distinct reaction, and people are beginning to realise that house and garden and family can give life a deep, rich harmony that is never really attained through, service flats, ■clubs, and restaurant's. Constant, movement is as futile as stagnation, and movement, has been the spirit behind all the life of recent years. People have always been going somewhere else; always on the move. They couldn’t go to one .friend 's house for fife evening; they .must go to six houses, giving half an hour to each. They must always be just going somewhere c.r just coming bach from 1 somewhere, and wherever they were at a given hour they itch to ‘be- somewhere else But there are signs now of something., like, a settling, .and a slower pace. ' ' h Financial 1 trouble is largely responsible for this, and. slackness in work is responsible for the financial trouble. But the trouble has its good side, since it has- shown people that the quieter mode of life is not so utterly boring as they thought it. Those of the rich who still possess estates are beginning to spend more time on them than they did, and to find their interest there. Those of the middle class who have had to cut down their Spending are discovering how many things they didn’t really want. •Others are discovering that if they want more money they must work for it.

Work, the gospel of Carlyle and, Ruskin, ha s so long; ibeen under the cloud of ridicule . Which has covered both those eminent Victorians that it is rare to hear now of working youths who get up at five in the morning to study before going to work, and walk long distances to attend lectures, as many of the middle-aged Fab our M.P. ’s did. But the ridicule is being blown away by the gale of trouble, and; it. only needs some public, figure of to-day, with the following that Carlyle had in his day. to show the satisfaction of work, to make the country again prosperous.