DISEASES OF NATIONS

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1802, 19 September 1906, Page 19

DISEASES OF NATIONS

A SUNDAY AFTERNOON LECTURE.

Although the weather on Sunday afternoon was anything but propitious, there was a fairly large attendance of ladies and gentlemen at the lecture given by Mr E. Tregear, Secretary for Labour, in Wesley Church, Taranaki street. The chair was taken by the Rev. P. W. Fairclough. A short programme, to which the contributors were Messrs Rowland iviacGo wan,Ha Hand and C. Hill, was gone through, and Mr Fairclough then briefly introauced the lecturer. Mr Tregear at the outset said that the subject of his address was absolutely stupendous, and it would be quite impossible for anyone to do more than outline it in the time at his disposal. He wou d only att mpt to sketch one phase oi the matter, arid one of the multitudinous causes of the decay and death of nations. That causes was one in which we of the present' day were much interested, and which applied to us intimately. So.ae people held that the prime cause of the decline of nations was militarism, others that it was the adoption of false redgions, others again that it was the adoption of habits of life which did not lit in with the conditions of the nations that brought them into existence. But tne cause he proposed to deal with was the establishment of slavery. Excavations made recently in the "Temple of the Sun” showed that slavery was in existence amongst the Babylonians 6000 years before Christ, although even in those remote days the people of that great Empire were highly civilised. The si ve system then, «s later on, brought effeminacy upon the masters. When men had slaves to do everything for mem they soon got into such condition that they were hardly capable to do them for themselves. In the case of the Greeks and Romans this was abundantly proved. When a nation emerged from savagery it was to be expected that many savage customs would remain, and wouid take a long time to wear away. In savagedom tiie reign of force was alone recognised. M ght was right, and the head of the family became the ruler of the household. His wives and children became subservient to his will, and when people formed groups, of families for their mutual protection or assistance, it would not be v ry Long before one man would be recogni.ed as the head man or chief of those grouped families. In the course ox t.me, either through the capture of prisoners of war, or through the growing up of a physically inferior class in ine community, there would bo formed a section of the tribe, which, originally servants, would g.adually descend in the social scale unlit tncy became slaves. And there was no middle class formed in these primitive times. Later on the public conscience became awakened to some extent;, and there were occasions when staves were manumitted, but as in the case of the Greeks the masters always had an eye very widely open to the main chance, anti they more often sold their slaves to somebody else. __ The number of slaves held in bondage in the palmy days of Greece and Rome ran into millions. They were largely employed in agricultural and in iiouseli'Old work, and also as soldiers and gladiators, and tlieir treatment almost invariably was brutal in the extreme. Having these men to wait upon them eventually broke down the strength of the n tion’s character in the case of Greece and similarly the Romans became effeminate and ueeautjii once slavery was adopted. The _ men who were the Roman agriculturists were a spl ndid class, but they became feeble and nerveless, and the success of the Roman arms waned until it became a thingof the ytuot. coming rig at uown to noclern days limy had the example of slavery of a different foim in America. There it was sren that the tendency of tlie system of holding men as slaves was debasing to the master as well as to the men. No doubt there were many slave owners of the St. Clair type, but the tendency was bchasing, lor a man who wanted to make money would not be likely to care mucji unat became ox s.ave children or old people, would only require slaves while they were in vigouious health, and would then take all the work they could out of them as did Simon Degree in the case of Uncle Tom. Even to-day there was to be seen a species of slavery which wa6 none the better for the fact that it was not called by that name. Strikes wexe occurring in many parts of the world practically, because workers were paid the barest of living wages in order to gratify the gi-eed of their employers. The publication of Upton Sinclair's book, "The Jungle,” had raised a tremendous outcry; but it seemed that the true lesson of the book had been overlooked. The outcry had been raised because people’s stomachs had been touched, but it was forgotten what a dreadful state of affairs existed in the slums of Chicago and other places where the slavery of to-day was rampant. The lecturer said he might be asked what he would propose to bring about a better state of affairs. He could propose nothing, but he trusted that everyone woujd endeavour to do ail that was possible to make public life clean and public ideals higher and nobler. (Applause). Mr Fairclough. in proposing a vote of thanks to Mr Tregear, said unselfishness of heart was the solution of the difficulty, aud that was what they had been hammering away at for generation after generation; but the time when "the meek shall inherit the earth” was not yet.