Wrong Beginnings

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXI, Issue 159, 20 June 1931, Page 5

Wrong Beginnings

A Story and Some Morals

(By

“LECTOR.”)

A writer in the “Rotarian” tells the following story:—

“Once, while driving with a friend of mine through the hills of Kentucky, we got lost. We could hear a rattle of milk cans up a narrow valley ahead of us. Soon we overtook a native of that region. We asked him how to get to Cincinnati from there. “ ‘Well, sir,’ he said, ‘you first go up here to the forks. Then you turn . . . then you turn . . ~ let me see . . . let me see . . . Hang it all, Mister, if I had to go to Cincinnati I wouldn’t start from here.’ ”

It is the kind of story that creates others, illustrative of the same truth that many people are unable to “getthere,’’evenwith the best available guidance, because they start out from, the wrong place.

Please keep your eye on the story reproduced above, and realise that, although the circumstances of the incidents that follow are different, the principle is the.same. The incidents, be it said, happened almost as they are set down. “CA’ CANNY.” In one of the great shipbuilding yards some thousands of miles away, it was a certain man’s’ job to drive rivets through the steel plates on a ship’s hull, using a pneumatic hammer. A visitor, who did not know much about driving rivets, but who bad a smattering of elementary economic knowledge, noticed that this particular workman went about his task in the most leisurely and easy-going fashion. The workman would look up at the great clock which dominated the dock, then at his row of rivets, and would occasionally pause at length to fill and light his pipe, or to argue yesterday’s football with his workmate working two steel plates away, while his other mates leaned on their hammers to “listen in.” When the visitor questionea this procedure the workman shifted his pipe to the Other side of his jaw, expectorated, and explained that he (the visitor) did not seem to realise that thousands of his (the workman’s) males were out of work, and that it was only fair, according to‘the rules of his particular union, to give them a chance by leaving some work for them to do. Said the visitor (who knew nothing about rivetting but something about economics): “I don’t think you’ll help your workless mates one scrap by slacking. ‘Ca’ Canny’ is the doctrine of fools. It is not less work, but more, that you will have to do if you are to make it possible for your employers to expand their business and so engage more labour. If you really wish to help the men less fortunate than yourself. (You, I suppose, are on award rates, no matter how much or how little you do) you should realise that the road to that kind of service, wherever it starts, does not start from reduced production. If I were you, I wouldn’t start from there.” THE WAGES QUESTION. On another occasion (here was a great industrial strike. The question at issue related, as usual, tc wages. In order to secure more wages, the men concerned stopped working and did without any at all. “Why are you striking?” asked the visitor. “For more money,” replied the men. “We cannot live on what we are getting.” The visitor asked in return, “Can the industry live if you all get the increase you demand?” Let us suppose for a moment that the honest answer tc that question was in the negative. It reveals then a familiar deadlock, and the old, puzzling problem—whether it is better

to accept the wages an industry can afford to pay or do without any at all. The visitor on this occasion reiterated the view expressed in the preceding paragraph, and asked: “Wouldn’t it be better to try to give more service for wages received (on rhe assumption that at the present rate of production the industry would become insolvent if it were to pay more) and so make it possible for prosperous conditions to bring about a natural increase in remuneration? When such a deadlock exists, the road to anywhere worth while does not start from a strike It not only cripples the workers, but it hurts the employers and the industry itself. It is like cutting oil your nose to spite your face. It is a wrong kind of beginning.” THE BETTER WORLD. Think now of a broader issue. There are all sorts of people at large who look for a new heaven and a new earth — a socialistic millenium when all will have every need supplied, when there will be plenty and prosperity for all, and when industrial disputes and misui'deistandings will belong to the distant past because the necessity fcr such happenings will ha>’t vanished Yet the utterly amazing and incomprehensible thing is that the exponents of such lovely theories, seek to develop class-conscious? css and class at, tagonisms as between different sections of the community. Combined with this propaganda you may easily find the burning desire to abolish capitalism and therefore capitalists. But, one may ask. what social Utopia can be built on the foundation of class hatreds, and what prosperity is possible if the sinews of industry are destroyed? To get to the earthly New Jerusalem, surely we should start from somewhere else? THE ROAD TO PROSPERITY. Here is another story that will serve to complete the circle started by the one quoted above. This also lias a moral, and a better one. A traveller in Switzerland, who was making for the town of Kanderstag, lost his way in the misty mountains. He was relieved when a youth driving a farm cart came along. “Can you tell me ■where Kandersteg is?” he asked. The youth replied, “J do not know, sir. I have never been there. But if you follow/ this track leading from here, you will get there. That track is the way to IjCandersteg.” Verb sap. Those who have ears hear will hear and understand. The laws of human progress are laid down. The way to Utopia is along a beaten track. If you are willing to follow the reasonable lines of advance hitherto laid down, you will get there. It all depends on whether you start out from the right place or not.