NATIONAL DISORDER AND DECAY

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVI, Issue 8263, 28 October 1912, Page 4

NATIONAL DISORDER AND DECAY

OR RATIONAL ORGANISATION

AND PROGRESS?

(By H. G. Wells.)

“Tho supply of good-tempered, cheap labor —upon which tho fabric of our con temporary ease arid comfort is erected—is giving cut. The spread of information and. tho means of presentation in any class, and tho increase of luxury and self-indulgence in tho prosperous classes, arc tnc chief cause of that. In the place of that old convenient labor comes a new sort of labor, reluctant, resentful, critical, and suspicious. The replacement has already gone so far that I am certain that attempts to baffle and coerce the workers back to their old conditions must inevitably lead bo ,a series of increasingly destructive outbreaks, to stresses and disorder culminating in revolution. OLD LINES OF NO USE. “It is useless to dream of going on now for much longer upon the old lines; our civilisation, if it is not to enter upon a phase of conflict and decay, must begin to adapt itself to the now —G<>udition,s, of which tho first and foremost is that tho wages-eaming, laboring class as a distinctive class, consenting to a distinctive treatment and accepting life at a disadvantage, is going to disappear. Whether we do it soon as tho result of our reflections upon the present situation, or whether wo do it presently through the impoverishment that must necessarily result from a lengthening period of industrial unrest, bhoro can be little doubt that we are going to curtail very considerably the current extravagance of tho spending and directing class upon food, clothing, display, and afl the luxuries of life.

AFFLUENCE WILL NOT TELL. “ The phase of affluence is over. And unless we are to be the mere passive spectators of an unprecedented reduction of our lives, all of us who have leisure and opportunity have to set ourselves very Strenuously to the problem not of reconciling ourselves to the wage-earners, for that possibility is over, but of establishing a new method of ©o-operation with those who seem to bo very definitely decided not to remain wage-earners for very much longer. We have, as sensible people, to realise that the old arrangement, which has given us of the fortunate minority so much leisure, luxury, and abundance, advantages we have as a class put to so vulgar and unprofitable a_use, is breaking down, and that we have to discover a new, more equable way of getting the world’s work done. , MEET LABOR HALF-WAY. “ The thing our society has most to fear from labor is not organised resistance, not victorious strikes and raised conditions, but the black, resentment that follows defeat. Meet' labor halfway, and you will find a new 00-opera-tion in government; stick to your legal rights, draw the net of repressive legislation tighter; then you will presently have to deal with labor enraged. If the anger burns free, that means revolution ; if_you crush, out the hope of that, then sabotage and a sullen general sympathy, for anarchistic crime. “That is one possibility that is very frequently in my thoughts about tho present labor crisis. There is another, and that is the very great desirability of every class in the community having a practical knowledge of what labor means. There is a vast amount of work which either is now or is likely to bo in the future within the domain of tho public administration—roadmaking, mining, railway work, post office and telephone _ work, medical work, noising, a considerable amount of building, for example. Why should we employ people to do tho bulk of these things at all? Why should wo not as a community do them ourselves? SHOULD EVERYBODY BE LABORERS? “Why, in other words, should wo not have a labor conscription, and take a year or so of service from everyone in the community, high or low ? I believe this would be of enormous moral benefit to our strained and relaxed community. I believe that in making labor a part of everyone’s life and the whole of nobody’s life lies the ultimate solution of these industrial difficulties. “But we are living in a time of more and more comprehensive plans, and tho mere fact that no scheme so extensive has ever been tried before is no reason at all why we should not consider one. We think nowadays quite serenely of schemes for the treatment of the nation’s health as one whole, where our fathers considered illness as a blend of accident with special providences; wo have systematised the community's water supply, education, and all sorts of once chaotic services, and Germany and onr own infinite higgledy-piggledy discomfort and ugliness have brought home to us at last even the possibility of planning the extension of our towns and cities. It is only another step upward in scale to plan out new, more tolerable conditions of employment for every sort of worker, and to organise the transition from our present disorder. WHY THERE IS MOVEMENT.

“Wo have in fact to ‘pull ourselves together,’ as the phrase goes, and

make an end to all this slack, extravagant living, this spectacle of pleasure, that lias been spreading and intensifying in every civilised community tor the last three or four decades. What is happening to Labor is, indeed, from one point of view, little else than the correlative of what has boon happening to the more prosperous classes in tho community. They have lost their self-discipline, their gravity, their sense of high aims, they have become the victims of their advantages, and Labor, grown observant and intelligent, nas discovered itself and declares itself no longer subordinate. Just what powers of recovery and reconstruction our system may have under these circumstances tho decades immediately before us will show. “The real task before a gbvorning class that means to go on governing ! is not just at present to get the better ! of an argument or the best of a barigain, but to lay hold of the imagina[tions of this drifting, sullen and suspicious multitude, which is the working body of the country. What wo prosperous people, who have nearly all 'the good things of life, and most of the opportunity, have to do now is to justify ourselves. MEET THE DISTRUST. “We have to show that wo are indeed responsible and serviceable, willing to give ourselves, and to give ourselves generously, for what we have and what wo have had. We have to meet the challenge of this distrust. “If wo are to emerge again from these acute social dissensions a reunited and powerful people there has to be a change of tone, a new generosity on the part of those who deal with labor speeches, labor literature, labor representatives and labor claims. Labor is necessarily at an enormous disadvantage in discussion; in spite at a tremendous inferiority in training' and education it is trying to tell the community its conception of needs an« purposes. It is not only young as a participator in tho discussion of affairs, it is actually young. Tho average working man is not half the ago of the ripe politicians and judges and lawyers and wealthy organisers who trip him up legally, accuse him of bad faith, mark his every inconsistency, ft isn’t becoming so to use our forensic advantages. It isn’t—if that has :o appeal to you—wise. THE NATION WANTS A PLAN.

“We want a national plan for pur social and economic development which everyone may understand, and wliich will servo as a unifying basis for all our social and political activities. Such a plan is not to be flung out hastily by an irresponsible writer. It can only come into existence as the outcome of a wide movement of inquiry and discussion. My business in these papers has been not prescription but diagnosis. I hold it to be the clear duty of every intelligent person in tho country to do his utmost to leam about these questions of economic and social organisation, and to work them out to conclusions and a purpose. We have come to a phase in our affairs when the only alternative to a great, deliberate renascence of will and understanding is national disorder and decay. WE WANT DIFFERENT ELECTIONS

“In Great Britain we do not have elections any more; wo have rejections. What really happens at a general election is that the party organisations—obscure and secretive conclaves with on tirely mysterious funds—appoint about 1200 men to .be our rulers,'and all that we, we so-called self-governing people, are permitted to do is, in a muddled, angry way, to strike off the names of about hall of these selected gentlemen. “There exist alternatives, and to these alternatives we must resort. Since John Stuart Mill first called attention to the importance of the matter there has been a systematic study of tho possible working of electoral methods, and it is now fairly proved tflat iu proportional representation, with large constituencies returning each many members, there is to be found a way of escape from this disastrous embarrassment of our public business by the party wire-puller and the party nominee.

PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION.

“I will not dwell upon the particulars of tho proportional representation system here. There exists an active society which has organised the education of the public in the details of the proposal. Suffice it that it docs give a method by wliich a voter may vote with confidence for the particular man he prefers, with no fear whatever that his vote will be wasted in the event of that man’s chance being hopeless. There is a method by which the order of the voter’s subsequent preference is effectively indicated. That is all, but see how completely it modifies tho nature of an election. Instead of a hampered choice of two, you have a free choice of many. Such a change means a complete change in the quality of public life. SPECIAL WORK IN SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES.

“ We want to have our young people filled with a new realisation that history is not over, that nothing is settled, and that the supreme dramatic phase in the story of hlngland has still to come. It was not in the Norman Conquest, not in the flight of King James 11., nor the overthrow of Napoleon ; it is here and now. It falls to them to be actors, not in areminiscont pageant, but a living conflict, and the sooner they are prepared to take their part in that the better our Empire will jicquit itself. How absurd is the pre-

occupation of our schools and colleges with the little provincialisms of our past history—before' A.D. 1800 ! ‘No current politics,’ whispers the schoolmaster, ‘ no religion—except the coldest formalities. Some parent might object.’ And ho pours into our country every year a fresh supply of gentlemanly cricketing youths, gapingly unprepared—unless they have picked up a broad generalisation or so from some surreptitious Socialist pamphlet—for tho immense issues they must control, and that are altogether uncontrollable, if they fail to control them. UNIVERSITIES ALSO FAIL. “Tho universities do scarcely more for our young men. All this has to bo altered, and altered vigorously and soon if our country is to accomplish ito destinies. Our schools and colleges exist for no other purpose than to give our youth a vision of the world and of its duties and possibilities in the world. \to can no longer afford to have them the last preserves of an elderly orthodoxy and the last repository of a decaying gift of superseded tongues. They are needed too urgently to make our leaders leaderlike and to sustain the active understandings of the race. " And from tho labor class itself wo are also justified in demanding a far more effectual contribution to tbo National Conference than it is making at tho present time. “ The labor thinker has to become definite in his demands, and clearer upon tho give-and-take that will be necessary before they can be satisfied. Ho has to realise rather more generously than he has done so far the enormous moral difficulty there is in bringing people who have been prosperous and at an advantage all their lives to the pitch of even contemplating a. social reorganisation that may minimis© or destroy their precedence. We have all to think, to think hard and think generously, and there is not a man in England to-day, even though his hands are busy at work, whose brain may not be helping in this great task of social rearrangement which lies before us all.”—From the “Daily Mail.”