"SULKING AND SLACKING."

Free Lance, Volume XIX, Issue 1013, 26 November 1919, Page 10

"SULKING AND SLACKING."

And "Slacking" and "Jazzing." ANEW York paper, the " Evening Post/' hits the, right nail on the head when it says that the state of political, industrial and social chaos in which the -world now finds itself is due to '' half the world sulking and slacking, whilst the other half has been slacking and jazzing." The '' jazz," we may here explain, is a peculiar wild and mad kind of.dance, and " to jazz" has come to signify what, in colonial slang, is known as "going on the burst." We are much afraid that the "sulking and slacking" and the " slacking and jazzing " of which the New York paper complains, no doubt with special reference to the United States, are by no means absent from life in New Zealand, and constitute a grave obstacle to that increased efficiency, production and prosperity which we all so much desire to see in progress now that the war is over, and that there has been some return __ to normal conditions. As to " sulking and slacking," where could a. better — or worse —example of this particular form of industrial insanity be found than in the contemptible " go-slow'' policy of the coal-miners, ths recent attempt to "hold up " waterside work in Wellington, and the attitude generally of the Extremist wing of the Labour Party ?

As to the slacking and jazzing there can be little doubt that the extra profits which have Been gained during the war by more than one section of the country producers and business men in the cities have been wasted in an extravagant and vulgarly ostentatious expenditure on high living and a senseless craze for a constant round of amusement. This extravagance by a'vulgar "new rich" class has undoubtedly played into the hands,_of the Revolutionary Socialists, and if persisted in, will do much to kill the old, simple, wholesome colonial life, and replace it by a hectic existence of tooeagerly sought-after and purely materialistic pleasure.

The " slacking and jazzing" of the class to which we refer and the existence of which no student of social conditions can fail to notice, if not checked by private common-sense and the force of healthy public opinion, wjll be almost as much productive of evil effect as the " sulking and slacking " of a certain section of Labour. The reproof administered by the New York "Evening Post" should be taken to heart- in New Zealand as well as in America.