SOCIAL PROGRESS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 14157, 4 September 1909, Page 6

SOCIAL PROGRESS.

WHAT IT DEPENDS ON.

ADDRESS BY DP*. FINDLAY.

. — PRES3 ASSOCIATION.]

Wellington, Friday. The Hon, Dr. Findlay delivered an address in the concert chamber of the Town Hall to-night on " Casual Labour: Its Waste and Remedy." Tho address was given at the invitation of the Waterside Workers' Federation, and Dr. Findlay explained that ho spoke as a private citizen and did not commit the Government to anything.

The great social problem, embracing all political questions, said Dr. Findlay, was how to make in any State the greatest number of healthy, happy, self-supporting human beings. An increase of national wealth would not alone do this. Thus, not wealth and its increase, but want and its decrease, must bo the paramount aim. of the Government, involving radical changes in methods. After speaking of the evils arising from the old doctrine that the State had nothing to do with the working side of the life of the people, Dr. Findlay asked what were tho remedies. The first essential in devising any remedy for casual unemployment, he said, was to distinguish genuine unemployed from clearly unemployable. The drink evil was a factor in all questions of unemployment; drink produced unemployment and unemployment led to drink. The reduction of either evil would undoubtedly reduce the other. The most effective way to improve man or woman was to begin in the home.

Dr. Findlay concluded a thoughtful address as follows : —Modern social progress depends upon two factorsupon intelligent State action and upon genuine individual effort. State or collective action can do much more than it has yet done in New Zealand to uplifit the level of social life and bring to each willing man and woman a better opportunity of improvement in its ethical and material aspects, but in that growing partnership (even in the ideal democracy) between the individual and the State, tho State must ever bo the junior partner. If the State does more for the maintenance of its able-bodied citizens than it asks them to do for themselves, it.will inevitably breed a race of social parasites. The animal kingdom (including man) everywhere shows that a parasitic generation soon follows the removal of the need of real exertion. A genuine spirit of self-help must meet State help more than half-way if we are to preserve a strenuous and improving type of manhood. But granted this genuine and intelligent co-operation of the two agencies of progress State help and self-helpwhat can hinder this country from becoming— the richest; that should not be our cardinal aim—but the land where want and squalor, intemperance and wasteful extravagance are unknown, and where the civilisation of our nation reaches its highest level in the widespread comfort, humanity and enlightenment of its people.