PLANS AND PROPHECIES.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XLIV, Issue 14008, 12 March 1920, Page 5

PLANS AND PROPHECIES.

(By H. C. Bailey.) -\y r o da not altogether chaugo with changing- Faithfully each suc-cer-ding January brings foj-th a heavy crop of speculation about the future, mi odd tiling, a sanguine protest thati are going to be wonderfully ehiffiged made in the form of an ad-iuir~.-uii that they still insist on doing as they always clid. _ This year ibei iproutfng of prophecies .seems to '•» more vigorous than ever. All sorts of people congress and confer, and they go oil publishing innumerable ground- plans tor tin- neiv Jerusalem, Many of the plans, to be sure, cancel each other. Hut who ever expected prophets to agree!' It is the prime necessity of the business to say something now and( startling. Nobody cures to listen to the prophet- who coldly declares thatnothing is going to happen: he may be tilling tin- truth, but that, is not what prophets are for. Their function is that of the .stimulant or of the counterirritant. Let us take a course of them. Here i»* one who prognosticates the immediate transformation of the British.

home, andjMs text is the home as established by the United States. There, you are told, anybody and everybody getM a liouse whicU is as full of machini rv as a submarine: a liouse which does

. very thing for you: which is one blissfull "mass of labor-saving devices. . They toil not. neither do they wash up in the smallest American houses; ■ thev pn-s> the appropriate button for -each of the operations of the daily round, and the necessary events happen. This, you are to understand, is what wo are to demand ol our new houses in Eng-

land. a comfortable exhortation .to tho-:o who iee no pro*!>e<'t of any permanent residenee at all this side.ilie cemetery. I Ins- long-distance prophets have

rather more of the connter-irriUnit than the stimulant about them. There is no

doubt a good time coming when the bed will make itself and the dishes will wash themselves, but it seems sufficient at present to ox pros a pious hope that in the golden age the machinery will not break down too often. Another sort of prophet bids us consider the troubles which-may come from the lack of really skilled labor. "That."' he savs cheerily, "is the nightmare that from time to time alarm's me. Is it not the case that the development of industry has brought to a relativlv small proportion the number of persons requiring anything that can really l«o termed «kill or judgment?" And certainly it is a nightmare to contemplate; the prospect of cities full of houses staffed by machine? which there are not. enough skilled mechanics to keep in ord< r. However, this prophet bates not a jot of heart or hope for all his nightmares. Here be is expressing "liopo that there will be a great, diminution in the unskilled work—the donkey work

of tile world —that merely involves muscle. Men are employed like beiists of burden and are doing duties that ought to Im- i« rformed by machinery. mainly because human labor has in the past been so cheap." 'Well., if we can .diift all the dull, nasty work of the world on 10 machines, so much the hotter lor . vervbodv. But is it altogether triio i hat. machinery has diminished the number of unpleasant tasks? Was there anvthing. before the age of steam, quite -o irksome as the job of a coal trimmer in a ship'* bunkers, or of his cousin in the stokehold? It may he that the aac of machinery supports a far larger population. a much greater volume of human life than our earth could bear in the old days, and the proportion of "donkey-work"" to the mass of labor may be much smaller, but. some of it is >ur< Iv more unpleasant than mere b< wiiin of wood and drawing of water. Th<- truth is the end of employing 11:011 "like beasts of burden." or on work even more disagreeable than the horse s. (lues not seem to be brought nearer by machinery. And here are other prophets on this matter of skill. \Ve have, you know, three groups of abilities —or we ought so have, though some of us may be painfully conscious that one was left out of our constitution—literary, mathematical. anil motor. This last has to do wit,h .all kinds of skill of hand, am! some ingenious gentlemen hjive de.vised ways of testing it. How fast one can tap a tliinu. how fast and how accurately one can plunges# ' key into

' a- keyhole, these are the questions propounded in the vile body-. \ ictims of the musical enerey of others will de.iir.e to admit that the speed with which one can tan a thing is any proof Jof intelligence. It seems that up to the age of ! I a trtrl grows more skillui. ••after which then'.i.- no improvement." A solemn thought. to be sure, but the investigators opine, that their tests are as yet of only theoretical value, whatever that may mean, so we need not yet mournfully decide that girls have reached their prime at 11 and all the rest is decadence. .Some evidence not much less startling was given by a gentleman who has been in hi> official capacity asking a nlimber of children what they want to he. He was led to suppose that "every !nv was !:ori! an engineer and every g : rl a shorthand-typist." The boys are not surprising. .Many men in all conditions of life can recall the day when the happiest lot in life seemed to be an engine-driver's. Hut the girls certainly M-ein to belong to a new generation — to the age. let us say. of new fGovernment department*. And yet. even for the children of the year.s of war and ihe multiplication of Ministries. it was hardlv to be expected that the >ralti.- of a shorthand-typist had a universal fascination. She is. no doubt. indispensable to our civilisation : but who suspected her of being the bright idea! of female youth? Our investigator assures us that this feminine determination to bi* clerical is

tlit* expression of their desire tor l'r< edom of action." :i (lark saving. !n what way is a shorthand-typist i.uuv fret* to a< t than a teaehec or a tiiri with handicraft ? He went on to hope th.'it in continuation schools • th:-- desire would he pandered to. and that the students would lie treated 110 lunger as children l>nt as young perj .-on.-.." No donlit that is the way in whii-ti education 'ought to progress. It is im 11-e to try to make a horn shortI: md-typi-i into a dressmaker. Hut the very universality of the desire is Mtrely evidence that it will have to he restrained. Everv child is not fit to a secretary or anything else; there is diversity «>t capacity, and il may be the 1 ruellest . ;lii'">'ion to train her for what she can never do well. We all !. no.v of disasters brought 011 hy parents \v'f!o would insist 011 making children iiuo something which they could never he. Hut the children are not necessarily right either in guesses at their own capacitv. A world < omposed solely of engineers and shorthand-typists seems to lack some of the elements of comfort. But ol.viously it must lie for the young people to decide. They will have to live in it. Those of us who are herond tli."- generous limits of age. lfi to 40, prescribed for the League of Youth can only assist them with our more or less justly despised advice. In the League of Youth they are hearty optimists. Their articles of faith declare boldly that ••human nature, under whatever garb, is at heart sound and good.'* a creed which it is certainly easier to Jiold before 40 than after. They seem to have had a rather stern corrective to optimism administered to them at St. Paul's, where they were told, ''it is the young what are failing us; it is the young who. with all the snlendor of their youth, who are letting England drop; it is the young who are reckless; it is the young who are spendthrifts; it is the young who are extravagant,'' and apparently the only thing to he said of them is that "the voting have such magnificent poiwrs of recuperation.Call you this backing of your friends?- quoth Sir John FalstafF. Well, it is good for 11s all to he told our faults, and no doubt the young are duly grateful. But is it not possible that age may mnko its mistakes in judging youth? Every word of the indictment may be "true and yet its justice as an indictipent is not vindicated. Most of us who are beyond that awful barrier of 10 years of life would no doubt agree that youth as reckless. • What we might wonder is whether that word is praise or blame. Recklessness is not now a sin into which we are the least likely to fall. Caution and sloth are more in our way. But what would vou think of young folks who always looked before they leaped, who always counted the cost, who never attempted anvthintr which was not- nerfectlv, safe? To he sure, they would never give vou any anxiety. What would they'bare to give anyone? The world is in danger enough, and it is for youth

to make it sa.fe again and happy. But there would be mighty little, nope for the world if it depended on young folks who would never lie reckless.