MIXED MUSINGS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume L, Issue 15375, 9 August 1913, Page 1 (Supplement)

MIXED MUSINGS.

.".. BT J. GILES.. Vjr'Y. ■>''' ' There shall be in England seven halfpenny loaves sold for a penny; the threehooped pot shall have ten hoops; and I will make it felony to drink small beer. —Shakespebk. 0. happy earth; reality of heaven! SUKLLET. Man never is, but always to be, blest. —Pope. It. is unfortunate that,.,. we cannot judge things- by what their names seem to imply. Socialism, which surely ought to mean the condition of a society constructed on the principles of, mutual help and friendly cooperation, seems doomed to (seek its ideal through class warfare ' and internecine strife. The -latest pronouncement of the extreme section of the Labour party declares war to the knife' against capitalism, averring that the interests of capitalism and labour , are. necessarily and; everlastingly opposed. It would be too much to ask of thes-a polemical -. economists a. precise definition of the word capitalism, or any other of the terms they cemmoniy use, but their attitude is; not encouraging,' and scarcely seems likely to lead to the "reality of heaven" dreamed 'of by. tie idealistic poet, or even to the. cheap loaf and strong beer that summed up the aspirations of Mr. John Cade. It seems to ,be leading to something . very different; in the United States of America; but fortunately in our own Dominion; as well as in the Mother Country, the I.W.W. has yet acquired so much power for mischief, and we may hope that reason 'will gradually assert itself among a class of industrial workers who are no more fools than members rof Parliament, and cannot be supposed incapable of learning that political power brings with it responsibility, and that natural laws have a way of giving unpleasant hints to those who ignore them. In fact, the working classes have by no means proved themselves the greatest dunces in learning 'the lessons" that Nature with her great evolutionary processes insists on our all acquiring at our own peril if we fail. During the wonderful era of apparent national prosperity that marked the greater part of the nineteenth century in England it was not so much the unreasonableness of the workers as the selfish blindness of the prosperous to the elementary principles of humanity and justice that led up to the critical economic problem that now confronts society. This can hardly fail to be apparent to anyone who is acquainted with the history of the 80 years that have passed since the great Reform Act of 1832, a point which for personal as well as general reasons I find a. convenient starting-point for my "musings."

A short time before that period it -.seemed that, the prospect of a quiet and happy solution of the Labour question, without the clumsy assistance of Acts of Parliament, had broken down with the collapse of the great and beneficent schemes of Robert Owen, and then the great Bill was looted to as the destined rectifier ;of ! all ills. Some ilk it. certainly, did rectify, I but not the grievances, of the "toilers.. ! Titer had helped .'to.;, force the Bill upon the reluctant holders of-privilege; and now they found themselves left out in the cold and their complaints ignored, and'so the- ■ beneficent Bill was, followed by the clamant • Charter, with its six-rayed' star of hope. •-.; Those who take a desponding view of -one .present economic troubles may; perhaps ■ bo somewhat reassured. by-a little istudyJ ofr the ugly clouds that hurig about the ftfn?' : years of the reign'- of; Queen Victoria. '■§> : J~: recall a little schoolroom in which ; a few small boys were wont to congregate under; the tuition of a kind : and sensible lady who entertained us with account*, of jibe I young Queen, of her- wisdom and, goodness, and of the delight with which the country welcomed her to the throne. .-. I also recall, to' memory the excitement of the same small boys when the quiet of the green I field in front of the school was disturbed ! by the invasion of a troop* of mounted* men glorious in scarlet coats and shining helmets, and the delight with which we. by permission of the schoolmistress, gated at them out of the schoolroom window as they went through, their exercises and their swords flashed in the sun—a<splendid spectacle for our young eyes. These warriors, wo were told, were the yeomanry cavalry, and they were being prepared for active service against the Chartists, ; an'.; evil , generation who, we were informed,, were constantly breaking the tenth commandment by coveting and desiring other men's goods, and were' raising riots and disturbances all over .the / country, and rebelling against the authority of our young Queen. Of course we had no doubt that such wicked people would be scattered like chaff before the glittering array of our mounted heroes, and I can answer for one little jingo who, saturated to the fingertips with such inspiration as a youth, of seven years could draw from* Pope's Homer, pictured to himself bow a , single hero of our 'red-coated troop would chase a • crowd of vulgar Chartists even as Achilles scattered the Trojans on the banks of Scammander.- '

But there was another thought which even in those days caused me ; some little perplexity. We were informed that the rioters were very fond of breaking and wrecking the machinery of their employers, a propensity caused by , the fact that the machines did the work instead of the men, and that therefore, the men having no I work earned no wages, and so could not buy bread. All these consequences seemed to follow as a matter of course, and yet— well, it did seem a strange thing that anyone should be worse off because goods were made cheaper. If machines could be made to do everything, so that nobody need work at all, must everybody starve? That problem has remained with me ever since, and I am still persuaded that nobody ought to be worse off because of the invention of a labour-saving machine. The time seems now to have arrived when such questions must be practically settled somehow, and if anyone lias, a better nostrum than that form of socialism which simply declares against the-monopoly by private hands 'of the great means of production provided by Nature for the good of all, it is a. pity he does not make his secret known. Manifestly, if things are to be made right without legal compulsion, the initiative must, come from the employers and not from the toilers : for what resource have the latter but to complain, to inveigh against injustice, to declare a class war, to strike, and to aim at getting all political power into their hands? But is it not now too late for such a move by the employers? Truly we might have had a different state of things now if the aristocracies of the land and of .industry had recognised a hundred years,ago that they were indeed trustees responsible for the welfare of those who did the hard work of agriculture, of mining, and of manufacture. Then it would have been seen, that the right of the workpeople to a decent' sustenance out of. the common concern was at least as clear as the right of the shareholders to a dividend; and agricultural leases would have contained a clause declaring the lease forfeited :f tLe labourer was allowed to live in poverty and squalor and by excessive labour to bring on premature old age. But the century has rolled on its course, and now we have to look to such emollients as old age .pensions and Insurance Acts (which latter, however, seem to be regarded in England as not very emollient in their operation), and all the other devices which are being hatched in the. fertile brain of that true enthusiast in the people's cause, Mr. Lloyd George. . And when all the reforms arc completed and the grievances removed shall we be satisfied ,< Not \ii evolution is the true doctrine; not if the poet ia right in saying, " Man never is, but always to be, blest." I think the poet is right', and that it is better so. :■ % :