RUGGED INDIVIDUALISM

Northland Age, Volume 8, Issue 2, 12 October 1938, Page 10

RUGGED INDIVIDUALISM

Sir. —We heard a great deal of praise of Rugged Individualism by the Tory Party during the last session of Parliament, but I have no doubt that there are many thousands who have been in much closer touch with “ rugged individualism ” than Messrs. Hamilton, Coates, Forbes and Co. The writer started work as a kauri bushman very considerably more than half a century ago, and has been in close touch with men who have worked hard and have had hard experiences, and others who have worked hard and have reaped a just reward, and yet others who have never worked but have schemed and reaped what they did not sow and have beome wealthy. In the kauri bush the work was done under the contract and subcontract system ; the pace under these conditions is always strong. The hours were fifty-eight a week, ten hours a day excepting Saturday, which was an eight-hour day, and it was practically a race each day, each week, each month. If two pairs of crosscutters were working close together it was a trial of skill and staying power to see which pair would cut. the most timber. In squaring timber for ship’s spars or for export purposes it was also a trial of skill and staying power ; one man would start on each side of a log and though not a word was said it was a race from start to finish. The same applied to those who worked with the bullock teams. The drivers’ work was not so hard, but those who followed the teams, up to their knees in mud and carrying a seventy pound macefield jack, a maul and an axe, and had to fairly heave their hearts out when the log got stuck, had to be built of fairly good stuff, and it is little wonder that a large percentage of them have been taken off with heart trouble, and that a number of the remainder are suffering from the same complaint.

I know a man who started bush work at the same time as I did. He worked for more than a quarter of a century at bush work, as prisoners never worked for crime, then bought and cleared several farms, working hard all the time. He sold the farms when he got them cleaned up, at a profit, and placed himself in a very comfortable position, but the Otto Niemeyer, Coates, Forbes, Hamilton and Co. slump got him and placed him behind scratch, and though past what is called the allotted span he still milks upwards of eighty cows with the help of a boy, and during the winter and early spring he now follows cows instead of bullocks up to his knees in mud, and a much more vile mud that that through which he formerly followed bullocks with a jack on his shoulder. He never complains of his lot, but says that he does not wish his boys, or any other boys, to have to go through the same experience. Another bush mate could not be persuaded to accept the old age pension, but worked in the bush until seventy-four years old, and then went to the Auckland hospital where he died two months later. Is that the kind of “rugged individualism” that the Tories are so anxious to preserve and if so is it not for the purpose of bringing more grist to the mills of those who have more now than they can possibly grind, rather than to remove poverty and suffering from the masses of the people. Surely the memories of the people are not so short that they have already forgotten the action of the Tory Party in extending their term of office by an extra year over the term for which they had a mandate from their electors, in order that they should carry out the Otto Niemeyer Plan, and surely it is not hard to imagine the position the people of New Zealand would be ; n now had they been successful at the last general election. Yours, etc., DAN LEWIS.