STATE DEPENDANTS

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 8680, 13 March 1914, Page 4

STATE DEPENDANTS

There is one point in Sir John Findlay’s very effective reply to Earl Grey’s “ shiver of apprehension ” at the number of our State employees that we feel constrained to differ from. Sir John regards our distinguished visitor as having fallen into the habit of hasty conclusions to which travellers are sometimes liable. Our visitor brought his views on the subject with him. He belongs to the school which sets its face against State dependants, and where it cannot find a way of doing without them, has fixed a certain limit beyond which it thinks lies the road to perdition. The Earl found this country exceeding tlie limit, wherein ho was perfectly correct. That was not a hasty generalisation. It was the correct-, ness that gave him that “shiver.” But the reason for the “shiver” gives his whole case away. By quoting the proportion of State servants his school (“we”) holds to be safe, the Earl admitted that the principle of having State . servants is quite correct. But wny there should be no more, he failed to make convincingly clear, or. even perhaps to understand. Hence the “shiver.” On the other hand, Sir John Findlay gave a list of the present -employees of the State. It is a longer list than the list of which the Earl approves in his own country where there is a large Civil Service, a great postal service, and many municipal services which surely come under tho same principle. But though Sir John’s list is longer there is no place in it where any mortal man can draw the line saying these to the right are righteously where they are and these to the left spell ruin. Opinions differ among men as to what services may be undertaken by the State, and what may better be left to private enterprise. As Sir Frederic Pollock said the other day of the experimental legislation which we have.passed during the last twenty years, it was like the Common, Law, continually adapting itself to new conditions. In the Old Country many people like Earl Grey are loth to extend the principle they have adopted. Here we have gone beyond them, showing that the democracy- is quite capable of doing business on business principles. Take the railways and the State life insurance, for example, out of many instances. There is,_ as Sir John says, nothing demoralising, for the people employed are not parasites. The danger the school for which the Earl speaks sees is that they may become the dependants of the State. True, they all have votes. But if we assume that they all become unreasonable, and take it into their heads to dominate the State—a difficult, -and we say at once a quite unwarrantable assumption—can we assume that they will all pull together? The latter is as unwarrantable 'as .the assumption that mosquitoes can be unanimous enough to pull a man out of bed. If they are they could do it easily. But what chance is there that they can be unanimous at all? The real question is how much business can the State undertake, and that question always remains, whatever the increase of that business may be. The answer to it is not dependent oil the number of persons employed, hut upon & multitude of economic, political, social, and other conditions which have to he considered as occasion requires. Our democracy understands this. The school to which Sir John Findlay has so convincingly replied does not. But as time goes on its views will necessarily alter. *