NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21471, 20 April 1933, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS

MAN AND THE MACHINE "Work was the primal curse. The machine offers the way out. It is rot necessary now for people to do hard and repelling tasks," writes Mr. Norman Tiptaft in the Daily Mail. "Wo know how to build light and airy factories, in which people can work and be healthy. We know how to harness power through the petrol engine and the electric current to produce the things we need. We know how to transport things when we have made them to people who need them at the ends of the earth. We know how to make not only the necessities of life for the whole world, but many of the luxuries as well, and, knowing these things, we are afraid. Why? The brain that devised the machine can surely control the machine of its devising. Not in fear of the thing man has created, but. in the mastery of it lies the only way to that saner society which our children will enter in the years that aro coming."

BRITISH AGRICULTURE In moving the second reading of the Agricultural Marketing Bill, Major Elliott, Minister of Agriculture, said they must try to establish an equilibrium of price levels and establish replacement of value as the criterion of what should be asked for from the consumer for the produce which he was attempting to consume. They had to ask themselves what the level was to be; was it to be determined by the lowest cost of production of the most' favourably placed producers, wherever they might be? That was the solution of the nineteenth century; it was the gospel associated with the greatly renowned names connected with the Manchester school. When the House of Commons abandoned that doctrine it als'o abandoned the complementary doctrine of the absolute freedom of the movement of goods. It was no longer the national policy to buy all over the world in the cheapest market, because they could not afford it. The Government intended to ensure that British agriculture should continue to thrive, and if possible to flourish. Other countries might say that Britain should no longer be the workshop of the world; they might lock her out of their factories, but they would turn her into tho fields, and the rest of tho world might well consider what would happen if the skill end inventive genius which tho British people had shown in the past were flung back into tho ancient industry of agriculture in which this country was second to none, but which it had temporarily neglected for half a century. It might be taken for granted that the barriers whicl\ other countries had set up against their trade would not be swept away in the future, as some of our economists and politicians were anxious to persuade the country would bo the case. In dealing with the conditions of the twentieth century Britain would have £o work out something very much nearer to the provisions ,of this bill than to the ideal world which was worked out by nine-teenth-century economists.

THE JURY SYSTEM In a letter to the Times Mr. Geoffrey Faber attacks the jury system on the following grounds: —" (1) The average man (or woman) is totally unable to retain tho arguments or the evidence in his head; and eqtfally unable to select what is important from the mass of conflicting material suddenly thrown at him. The natural capacity to do so is extremely rare; and the juryman has no training whatever to equip him for so difficult a task. Nor is he assisted (so far as my experience goes) with any documents. I sat on the jury in a complicated. and prolonged action a few years ago. We had nothing to help us—not even a copy of the pleadings. I was told subsequently that it was most undesirable for juries to have copies of the pleadings. Why? Because they might get even worse tied up with tho pleading than without them! As tho case dragged oti tho Judgo and the counsel were supplied with verbatim reports of tho evidence given on tho proceding days. Not the jury. Again, why not? Not, I was told, bccauso of tho expense, but because wo should bo even more muddled if wo had tho evidence to refer to than we were already. 1 have no doubt that this was quite true. But it is surely a reductio ad absurdum of the whole system. (2) The formation of opinion by a jury, as expressed in its verdict, is tho result of sentiment rather than of reason. Discussion in tho juryroom can tako tho most farcical turn. There is always the amateur lawyer, concerned to confuso the issue of fact; tho bored juryman; tho inconceivably stupid juryman. Tho issue may easily turn on the presence of one man with a stronger personality than the rest. (3) These weaknesses of the jury have a' most debasing effect upon the conduct of a case. Instead of presenting a rational argument for dispassionate consideration, counsel are tempted to cmploy every tawdry device of njjetoric and theatricaiisin to impress the jury. These devices often defeat themselves by their own crudity. But they are responsible for much popular mistrust of tho courts. Skilfully used by a clever advocate they may pervert tho course of justice."