STRAIGHT TALK

Maoriland Worker, Volume 10, Issue 448, 8 October 1919, Page 4

STRAIGHT TALK

This is the best of all possible worlds. To doubt it is to belong to tho wrong - thinking A Woman's "section of the comDeath. munity," a cant pljrase coined by the cantologists of the canting Press. Under the heading, "A Woman's Death," a local paper chronicles the passing away from this earth of one Margaret Sullivan, who died in the Dunedin Hospital. Death, taken by itself, is a wonderful phenomenon, as strange and miraculous as birth, but too common to excite much comment. But this death was hastened by depression, by nerve trouble, and by poor health generally. At the inquest which was held to discover the cause of death, a sister of the woman said she had been worried by the loss of her home, which had been sold up by the landlord. The evicted woman took a dose of irritant poison, which, combined with her other troubles, led her out of a world where she had no j.ssured right to live, but only a lien on existence, subject to the regular payment of rent. The intelligent coroner returned a verdict that death was due to heart failure, following the taking of poison while deceased was in a depressed state of mind. A purely medical verdict, or, as the intelligent reporter generally phrases it, a verdict based on the medical evidence. Nothing said about the landlord, or tbe unthrtft.iT.ess of the ! woman in not taking steps to see that her rent was provided for. This kind of social event is never commented upon by the daily papers; it is never made the subject of a "leader" by those scribes and Pharisees who are great on Law and Order, and see in every strike an effort to reduce the world to Chaos and Old Night. To write "leaders" on such paragraphs might set people thinking, and wondering whether, aCtcr all, a country, claiming to bo God's Very Own, ia which a poor woman, sold up by a landlord,-sees no hope for herself but lo seek the hospitality or Death, itho very best possible. At any rate, Margaret Sullivan has gone to her last home---a home, rent free, where tho landlords cease from troubling and weary tenants arc at rest. And her countrymen and countrywomen arc too interested iv tho news and politics of the clay to give her a thought! * # * * Tho small talk of nu'inbeis of .Parliament i 5 not unto rdifioaiioii •")« a. ruX, yol. something r_u bo The learned from it by liv 1)01-3-(.71 those who civ« their of Bacon, thinking faculties ' a chance. Mr. Poland the other day drew the attention of tho Houso to the fact that a teacher he knew of, a. Master of Arts, with CO years' experience, got only £275 a year. Mr. Sykes, who was making au appeal for better pay for teachers, said he knew a like case. A Liberal member interjected that managers of bacon factories got as much as £1200 a year. Mr. Young thereupon said that these highly-paid liven possessed administrative ability and organising power. This can be read in a number of ways; either that, a teacher does not need, or does not. have, administrative ability and organising power, and is, therefore, not paid for it, or that the education of the future citizens of the country is a job that does not call for the samo ability as the management of a bacon factory. Or it may be taken as meaning that education is a trifling thing compared to a business run for profit. And yet what industry in tbis Dominion needs administrative ability and organising power mors lhan (lie educational sys- , tern? The rottenness of running industries for private profit is well illustrated by the titate of mind of the Liberal member who can see nothing wrong in a public teacher getting a miserable wage, and a bacon manager getting far more than he could earn if he were paid by productive results. The State which allows its bacon supply department to be run for private profit, and to become a flourishing industry, with managers paid for administrative ability and organising power, and allows its teachers to be underpaid men who need not have the qualifications of a bacon factory manager, cannot last much longer in the struggle for v.tlYI e\iii*. -ouliiiiicoi bouiali_L wuuiii admit that its -downfall would justify the idea that, in some cases at least, the fittest does have the best chance of survival. Unless the Dominion is content to be the bacon factory of the world and produce as its staple products pigs and pig-philosophy, the relative Importance of bacon and education will call for speedy adjustment. * * * # To work is the workers* lot. The worker knows that, because Nature has decreed it. The Uncommercial "Dominion newspaper Travellers, knows Ihis great truth quite well, for it has discovered that houses cannot be built without builder?, and that newspaper scribblers are of little use iov th. purpose. Ja s-j. article on the hous*

tical nature, the "Dominion" insists on the need for house-builders as a prime essential to the work of house-build-ing, and points out that there is not sufficient labor to do the work, and that contracts are going a-begging. The paper also advocates immigration, and declares that "if building tradesmen were short of work in any part of tho Dominion they would, of course, be attracted to Wellington and other centres, where the shortage is apparent and acute." The 'Dominion" has a rare sense of the obvious, but seems not to labor under any sense of the anomaly that house-builders should be mere nomads, able to fold up their tents, like the Arabs, and seek places where house-builders are in demand. A carpenter, as a rule' has no home of his own; no wife, no children, no settled interests. He is always roaming from place to place, from land to land, looking for work. The fortunate leader-writer, no doubt, has a home of his own, a settled interest and stake in the country, and no need to look for work. Many good house-builders, no doubt, left their bones on the battlefields of Europe, and their dependents homeless. The organisation of industry under the capitalist regime is not yet perfect. There are innumerable people engaged in less essential industries than house-building w r ho have no need to worry over the shortage of houses or tho shortage of labor in the building trade. At the same time, ono cannot but see in the "Dominion's" bright idea that all building tradesmen would be "attracted" to Wellington if there were work here and no work where they were, the great value of the "law" of Supply and Demand. If all home-builders had homes of their own and work at their doors, Wellington would have to go short of civilised habitations. Or, as a last resort, Wellington might, have to use its own wits and devise some means of supplying its own requirements in the way of housing by its own labor. If, for instance, a uiau could earn as much building a house as somo men can by pointing out. the difficulties in the way, men might bo "attracted" to the industry for other reasons than thoso advanced by the "Dominion," without tho need for bringing in thousands of immigrants to prove that the 'law" of Supply and Demand, whilo solving tbo housin..; problem by providing a surplus of labor, "would help contractors to get cheap labor and encourage thorn to tender for contracts now to let. The beauty of tho existing system iv the eyes of the contractors is this, that tbe housing problem cannot, be solved without a plentiful aud cheap supply of labor. No problem can be solved under Capitalism that does not pay tbe capitalist. The only euro is the organisation of industry and the organisation of industry is Socialism. Tho "Dominion" does not recommend Socialism, but that in itself should be a recommendation of it. •x- * * * A man who doe. not speak the truth need not be called a liar. Apart, from * tho fact that our Mow mealy-mouthed ;>g. Thousands would regard it as bad are Made, form — unparliamentary language—Lo call a man a liar in so many words, many a man speaks wha,t is not true through ignorance. Dr. .lohnson, who lived in 'an age when virility was _ot considered the same thing as scurrility, used to draw a distinction between the man who said what was not true in ignorance, and the wilful liar. He would say of the first that he lied; of the second, "he lies and he knows he lies." Mr. Ewan McGregor, who presided at a Protestant political gathering a few days ago, is reported to have said that be was an employer of labor. This was unnecessary, in view of tho fact that, he "further stated," as the daily papers would say, that he at ono time had men in his employ "who are now worth their thousands by their own industry and thrift." Mr. McGregor may be a model employer of labor, but it will be observed by those who read carefully that the men now "worth their thousands" do not work for Mr. McGregor now. Evidently they were Industrial Protestants who objected to being wageslaves. We wish there were more of them. Pursuing a. process of induei.'v.:- rcasoni-., th. i_ .ni".-,-. Day r>. _.v to the 'conclusion, not that Mr. McGregor's former employees made "their thousands" while working for him, but started business for themselves and got others to make profits for them. Mr. McGregor, no doubt, implies that all workers could do the same, but the like process of reasoning will show the fallacy of every worker becoming a "boss" and making his thousands by his own industry and thrift. In fact, the more the train of reflection is pur. ued, the more H will be seen that Mr. McGregor's model employees did not make "their thousands" by "their own industry and thrift," but by the industry and perhaps the want of "thrift" of their employees. Which again will lead to the only rational conclusion, and that is that "industry and thrift" must exploit Labor before "thousand, cau b?