THE GOSPEL OF WORK.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVIII, Issue 18599, 29 December 1920, Page 6

THE GOSPEL OF WORK.

■ ♦ 'A coHtpl/1? of years ago ifc would hare teen something very little short of high treason to hint that the British soldier Was anything but the finest fellow in the world, hut nowadays candid friends are rising up to tell “Tommy ” things about himself which would vastly have surprised him in 1918. One of these candid friends is Colonel H. Rowan■l? obinson (he was a Brigadier-General in the war), who in an article in the ■“ National Review ” for November speaks with refreshing frankness concerning the relative merits of the Germans and-the British, both 6oldiera and civilians. “ The serious student of the war,” he says, “will hardly ’deny that the, German soldier worked better than the British, or any other soldier of the Allied Rowers; and from the previous record of the German civilian it is to be presumed that he, tbo, worked better than his opposite and enemy number,’’ The gallant Colonel goes bn to : give instances. “ Certainly,” he says, “ the sight of British troops working on the roads was often a lamentable spectacle. At any given moment there" might have been an average of 10 to Jo per cent of the men actually work- .<*»£, .while the remainder wen* plainly

idling, or lighting their pipes, or examining their tools, or doing anything, ia fact, hut work. Oil a bitterly cold day men could he seen swinging their arms and stamping their feet when they could have kept at lepst aa warm by wielding a pick or shovel. 'Hie exceptions, as a rnle, woro the old men. There were always to bo seen a number of grey-headed old veterans putting their whole mind to their tasks and doing them splendidly. They had learnt to do their bib before tire days of limitation of production, and set a noble example that was but too rarely followed.” He goes on to say that things were even worse in England, and considerably postponed victory. Since the war there has been no improvement. Chi all sides there have been strikes, slackness, limitation of output and demands for shorter hours.

So far Colonel Rowan-Robinson has proceeded in a vein with which all readers of the “National Review” must be quite familiar, but in his treatment of cause, effect and remedy the Colonel exhibits rather more of sweet reasonableness than one would expect in such pageSy The decadence of the Briton as a worker is ascribed, primarily, to the trade union system, but the responsibility is mainly placed on Governments. The trades unions by “ perfectly simple and direct methods,” formulated by “men of low education and limited outlook and wholly ignorant of political economy,” were “ uniformly successful in their battles with the employers and gained thereby a series of signal successes for their clients, expressed eventually in higher wages and healthier conditions of labour and of housing.” The Colonel admits that the success of the methods initially employed by trades unions, which as we all remember are principally comprised in the words “ strike ” and “ eft’ canny,” made such methods traditional, and rendered it difficult for the more enlightened Labour leaders of to-day to alter them, even if they desired to do so. Therefore he blames, not the trade unions, which took the lino of least resistance, but the Governments, which alternately bullied and coddled them, and failed to develop any broad and well-founded policy which Would have led trade union ideas into sound yet equally profitable channels. Discussing remedies, the Colonel condemns nationalisation root and branch as likely to intensify and perpetuate the slackness of which he complains. “ Possibly,” he says, “ the solution is to be found in co-operation or in profitsharing, two systems alike in principle, though not in operation. They have their objections: the capitalist risks and wins, and becomes a profiteer; he risks and loses, and the crowd passes over his body. But what happens to the profit-sharers when the profits are not, and to the co-operating workmen when their combined efforts fail P They will need State support—that is, charity—which weakens the moral fibre and power of work of the recipient. On the other hand, there are great advantages : mutual confidence in place of the old distrust; co-operation to replace friction; a full dignity of labour subservient Only to the State. Here, indeed, are moral assets to pit against the ambitions of lost leaders. The economic relations of Capital and Labour should be ethically correct, but they are not always so, and indeed seldom appear so to the workman, whereas the co-operative system is not only just, but has the merit of appearing just. And it should ensure such hard and Willing work* that failures afid consequent State support should be of rare Occurrence. Other difficulties will arise, tio doubt, hut in a system that is basically sound there is over a solution, whereas in other systems recurring troubles lead to surrender, to moral decadence, and eventually to an impasse.” We must confess to considerable sympathy with Colonel Rowan-Robin son's philosophy. His estimate of the British 6oldier is possibly too low, and his praise of the Germans misplaced, but in the essence of his contentions he is quite sound. In so far as the trade union system has made it profitable for the worker to he a slacker its tendency has been morally and materially bad. It is- not good for the. soul of any man that he should lose his pride as a craftsman; that emulation should be stifled and mediocrity imposed on all. Co-operation may, or may not, prove the ultimate solution of the impasse towards which the industrial world is drifting, but we are pessimistic enough to prophesy that matters wilt hare to get much.j.worße than they are before the politicians of to-day tackle so large and fundamental a change in industrial organisation. In the meantime they, like the trades nnions, may be expected to take the line of least resistance, little reeking whither that lino leads.