ECONOMIC RELATIONSHIP

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume I, Issue 144, 3 June 1911, Page 5

ECONOMIC RELATIONSHIP

BETWEEN MASTERS, WORKERS, AND STATE.

ADDRESS BY MR. HILL.

! Mr. Hill, Chief Inspector of I Schools, Hawke’s Bay, give the fol- * lowing interesting and instructive I address to the members of the Phil- | osophical Institute, at Napier, last j night. I The question that rises up before I me beyond all others is the relaI tionship that exists to-day in the j industrial world between the State, ; the workers and the capitalists. The ! study of mankind, is Man himself ; ; and I know of no discovery in i science so important at this time i as an inquiry into the

; ECONOMIC RELATIONSHIP between workers and masters and i the State. No one interested in the | welfare of his race can pass among j peoples representing half a score i of different nations but must be at- ; tracted as much by the strangeness of the scenes that come before him as by the wide differences existing i in the aspirations and ideals of the J masses. In Egypt, Fiji and the Sandwich Islands you see dark races employed in the most menial occupations and working under . conditions that defy description. J They are unorganised mobs living like beasts of burden, and having ■ apparently neither ambition nor hope. In Canada you see the settler aiming to raise himself in his I endeavour to conquer the wilderness and transform it into a home i for himself and his offspring, f Health, hope and ambition are i there, and hope is at the prow. In ; the Eastern States of America, as ■ in Great Britain, you see organised ! industralism hoping and hopeful, but in battle array, while in Italy and Egypt you see poverty and in- > dustry closely allied with a comparatively high standard of agriculture.

‘ ORGANISED LABOUR i stands incomparably higher in power and influence in the counsels ; of nations than was the case a few years back. But what of unorganised and casual labour? One has merely to observe what is daily go- . ing on in the streets and by-ways of all large cities, to observe the ; miserable conditions that exist. Go into the lodging places providj ed. for instance, by the London ! County Council, and you will soon i learn what a dead weight belongs | to society, and what a vast amount • of effective producing power is beJ ing lost to the world by the indis- ■ criminate methods empioyed in the ? management and supposed control ! of the people—the direct outcome , of bad and inefficient organisation • on the part of the State. It would 1 be AN INTERESTING ENQUIRY, if such were possible, to find out I how many physically capable were j engaged in supervising the physically capable non-workers. It has I been the pride of an Englishman ; that he is free to carry on his busi- ; ness affairs in his own way, and, ; no doubt, great things have been : accomplished under this plan. Individualism in its way is a good thing, indeed a necessaiy thing, if ; society is to become more than a ! mere mechanical rule of thumb de- | vice for the government and trainf ing of mankind. But what may be i good and proper in government at i one period in the history of a couh- , try may not be so in another, and < it is this fact that has been most ’ disregarded in countries where the • social, economic and industrial conditions have called for alteration. ! A State, like an individual, has a beginning and an end. Between these extremes many differentiations occur. Think, for example, in ! the life of every individual of babyhood, childhood, youth, manhood and old-age, and recollect the ; scores, nay, the hundreds of phases . that the human form undergoes in ■ its

! EVOLUTIONARY PROGRESS. But what occurs to the individual occurs in a thousand more complex forms in a society or a State, and that society or State best conforms to environment where changes in condition are followed by the neces- ! sary modification and adaptation of its parts. We see existing in England and elsewhere conditions among the lower classes of utter misery, even among physicallycapable men and women whose employment would be as beneficial to society as a whole, as to the individuals themselves. The loss to a country in consequence of bad organisation is simply incalculable. The loss, the direct money loss, to the nation is great, but the loss of SELF-RELIANCE, MANLINESS, and everything ennobling among the people, is greater. For example, in England last year, 942,837 persons were relieved under the Poor Laws, and each day, on the average, 33,797 indoor and out-

door able-bodied adults were relieved because of poverty and unemployment ! In New Zealand 148,914 persons, engaged in ordinary industrial and agricultural pursuits, were returned in 1907 as earning in wages alone £12,688,600; so that it can be seen, apart from the cost of free maintenance of so many capable non-workers, what a large loss in earning power results to the community. And this state of things is the outcome of the force play of individualism where the Government of the country does little more for the individual born within its jurisdiction than take note of his birth, and when old enough require him to attend school for a season preparatory to his being ushered into the WORLD OF COMPETITION.

To sink or swim—who Knows or* who cares? What a preparation! for life’s work and duties! Con-J sidering the state of society in re-i lation to the employment of young; children, and the terrible odds the! majority of them have to face on; their first entry into the industrial; world, a re-organisation of the 1 methods of dealing with children is much needed. And this has become more necessary in the interests of collective-industrialism and individualism as understood today, for organised industrialism requires an organised scheme of special training in the case of children preparatory to their entry into the various channels of employment. In England industrialism has reached a much more differentiated stage than in this country, and anyone interested in the humanities is forced to give heed to questions such as

HUNGER. NEGLECT, AND POVERTY.

For a century an<j more the factory system has played many parts in the industrialism of Great Britain. Differentiation in the processes of manufacture and in the treatment of workers by employers has combined to increase, so that at the present time a workman, apart from the particular kind of work he performs in a community of workers, and although apt in the particular work he is called upon to do, is not a skilful worker in the making of an article as a whole. During my late visit to England a portion of my time was spent in studying the

SOCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL CONDITIONS.

Workshops where single indivi-! duals labour and factories where; hundreds and even thousands are ; daily employed were visited, and • inquiries were carried on as to, wages paid, hours of labour andthe habits and social condition of- 1 workers. As a generalisation, it; might be stated that the larger the factory, the better were the working conditions and the brighter the! prospects of the workers. Port : Sunlight, belonging to Lever Bro-; thers, near Liverpool, and Bourne-; ville, a suburb of Birmingham, be-! longing to Cadbury and Co., which, j with others, were visited, represent the high water-mark of the collec-tive-industrial system in England; to-day. Few people appear to rea-; lise what is meant by collective-j industrialism as it exists in the! Motherland, nor do they realise the! deadening effect which i

INTENSE SPECIALISATION, has upon workers, but the fact that stands out most prominently is this, that the greater the division of labour in producing an article, the less the knowledge of the individual worker in the general makeup of the article. In the factory this aspect is so pronounced that it is exceedingly rare to find a workman capable of making an article through all the various processes such as are found in a modern factory. A worker learns to perform a certain class of work, and if that should fail by the introduction of new processes, he loses his employment and is in the position of one beginning life anew. But this is not all. Specialisation, whilst it improves very' materially the sum total of the producing powers of individuals, I causes them to degenerate in gen-1 eral efficiency as the result of me-j chanical repetition of the same operation. This is one of the re-1 suits of I COLLECTIVE-INDUSTRIALISM !

to-day. Were this the only result the case would be serious enough, but inquiry points to a growing antagonism in many places between the controllers of collectiveindustrialism and the separate workers, as illustrated by the colliers of South Wales and the shipbuilders on the Clyde. But CAPITAL AND LABOUR

to be productive cannot be antagonistic. To produce the highest collective result they must be mutual, and in a measure interchangeable. Labour is capital when used for productive purposes, so that the capitalist who employs a thousand men is using human machines as capital, Now, the capitalist is well