INDUSTRY AND LEISURE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22211, 11 September 1935, Page 17

INDUSTRY AND LEISURE

Sir, —Your leader as above strikes the true twentieth century note. The crowd sees, in ,a perplexed kind of way, that the development of the machine reduces the volume of human labour required to produce commodities, and from this superficial observation it is concluded that machinery necessarily " creates " unemployment; That certainly must be the outcome if our social and economic thinking does not keep pace with our mechanistic advance. Production of mere necessities, covered largely by the terms " food, clothing and shelter." will never again absorb all human labour power, and it is to refinement of " servicing " and the expansion of luxury consumption that we must look for future development. A social and economic system, therefore, which fails to provide all willing would-be workers with a full service of the main necessities of existence does not fulfil even elementary requirements, and is hopelessly incapable of dealing with the advanced situation scientific and mechanistic progress has brought us face to face with. Poverty and want, in respect of " food, Clothing and shelter," is anachronistic in 1935. Until these wants are supplied, people in the mass cannot effectively demand all those modern forms of luxury and leisure upon the provision of which economic activity becomes dependent in a progressively increasing ratio. The time is fully ripe for a move onward and upward to a far higher plane of material well-being than the community, as a whole, has hitherto experienced. Having arrived at a crossroads, it is well to reflect we will starve if we stay there: Nature permits no standing still; if ■we would not go back to barbarism, we must go forward boldly to a brighter and better future. T. E. McMillan, Matamata.