VARIETY'S CHARM.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20596, 21 June 1930, Page 25 (Supplement)

VARIETY'S CHARM.

BY MATANGA,

NEEDFUL FOR LIFE,

In days of want, with a Minister of Finance tolling all tho world how empty the national coffers aro and how needful it is for everybody to practise thrift, there is an urging to cut tastes down to a minimum. To long for fewer and simpler things becomes a virtue in most eyes. It is John Stuart Mill's fraction of life over again—its numerator tho things to be got, its denominator the demand for them, and tho ratio capable of increase by either increasing tho things available or decreasing the effort to get them. The doctrine is serviceable, at times imperative, but it has its limits of use.

By tho multiplying of wants tho stature of man has grown. Civilisation's history can bo written in terms of this increase. • Wanting only a little cave and a few daubs of woad and a sharp stone or two, primeval ' man could get along very well. Sufficient unto tho day was tho food thereof; to-morrow could take care of itself, and ■ tho last- morrow be forgotten. But in oven primeval man was an urge to get moro things, different things; and he soon turned this impulse to its inevitable end, the getting of better things—better, because, in part, they were different from those with which ho had been content. Not only' had variety a charm: its appreciation served a purpose essential in the progress of human life. Applied to what aro conveniently called good 3, without any ethical value being given to the term, and allowing it to bo inclusive of intangible as well as tangiblo things, this way of putting tho truth calls for little thought to make it convincingly clear. Nevertheless, when thero enters that alluring and teasing word, " luxury," the theme takes on a new guiso of seriousness. To let desire run beyond the limits of the purse is to court penury, and to go by the slippery descent of wants to tho dread Avernus of Want. Limits of the Process.

It is of this that tho Minister of Finance is thinking, along with many a man and woman without any other diminishing exchequer to contemplate save that of a householder; and in high and low places alike thero is bethought that promising way of getting rid of tho - wolf at tho door—throwing to him the things that can bo done without. This way leads to making somo of tho remaining things servo as many purposes as possible. But tho wolf has a nasty trick of coming back with appetite unappeased, to make more and ever more demands, and what was- adopted as an emergency measure is "seen to be as ineffective as it was desperate. There is a harsh moral in this for thinkers about unemployment. They can bo loft to muse on it. For the moment, it is enough to note ho>y beset with- peril to life in general is this reaiwakened impulse to cut wants to tho bone, - , • * -

The cutting cannot very well stop at the bone. Its sharp logic, applied with unseeing frenzy, will get down to the soul and imperii the life it was employed to save. If " the economic man" could walk out of academic theory to people the earth universally with flesh and blood after ' his kind, this danger might be viewed' without fear. However, just because he can never get out of books to do so really deadly a work, there is aroused a suspicion that he is no more and no less than a monstrous fiction, and that those who claim so lightly* his strange acquaintance ought to have a care how they present his claims to respect. In sooth, ho is not half the fino fellow some of them foolishly make out. Economy Campaigns.

In some present-day economy campaigns there is evident a wish to propagate his kind in tho workaday world. Their promoters aro not to be roundly blamed. They have become painfully aware that the reckless multiplying of wants, the continuous passing of luxuries into necessities, has endangered their countries' industrial and commercial stability, and have set about bringing back what they deem sanity in the scheme of human business. An illuminating instance is supplied by a recent development in tho United States* There Mr. Hoover, as alert a marshal of economics as ever had office, has achieved a very notable success in the cutting down of variety of products and tho standardising of output. At his urging, and on the initiative of the Department of Commerce, there have been held conferences of manufacturers, distributors and consumers in many industries. By tho end of 1925, as is narrated in Mr. Walter Meakin's " The New Industrial Revolution," nine hundred conferences had been neid, and lour hundred trade groups were engaged in working out schedules of simplified shapes and sizes. These schedules covered thousands of varieties of articles, and resulted in reducing varieties of pocket-knives from 1500 to 300, of hammers and hatchets from 2572 to 761, of plumbers' pipes and fittings from 17,000 to 610, of stoves and ranges from 2982 to 364, of paving-bricks from 60 to 6, of spades and shovels from 4000 to less than 400, and of blankets from 78 to 12. Thcso are typical reductions. There wero many others. Enough is indicated by them to justify Mr. Hoover's own description of the achievement as " ono of the most astonishing transformations in economic history." The Ladder of Varied Wants.

No one will begrudge Mr. Hoover his gratification. Viewed in somo ways, tlio result may bo hailed as a boon. But is it therefore right to acclaim the method as ono for universal and relentless application in the realm of human desires? By the ladder of varied wants industry itself has climbed to profitable heights, and all human lil'o has grown in enjoyment and outlook. That the increase , of wants may overshoot tho point of useful scrvico to mankind needs little argument. In this, •uppetito comes with eating," and may bring disease in tho body politic. But tho passion for standardising, even when associated with a sane wish to simplify, may go too far. To reduco things to pattern is to reduco men to spiritless monotony. Variety is more than tho spice of life; it is of tho cssenco of lifo itself. It has, happily, an enduring charm. 11 wo could all bo fashioned on tho principle of " interchangeable parts" this would bo a drab and unpleasant world, fortunately, we cannot; and all the Hoovers and their inspectorial officials can never have their will on us. Mr. Hoover himself gets his valuo from being unlike others, and tho man who kicks over tho traces and invents a new want will havo his use long after Mr. Hoover has gond his way—if ho should go that way—by a standardised coffin to bo remembered only by a standardised tombstone, what time ho is busily employed in reducing tho harps of heaven to ono pattern, its sound of many voices to one note, and it 3 many mansions, to ono uniform design. If tho theologians aro to be believed, ho will find work enough and to spare to tax his organising souhj