OUR "CO-OPERATIVE" WORKS SYSTEM.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 15856, 30 August 1913, Page 10

OUR "CO-OPERATIVE" WORKS SYSTEM.

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE PRIME MINISTER, (Per favour of the Otago Daily Times.) Dear Mr Massey,—There is probably no department of government in which there is more scope for reform than in the carrying out of public works under the so-called co-opcrativo system, and tho action already taken by Mr Fraser, as Minister of Public Works, should go far to justify your assumption of the title " Reform " Government. There can be no doubt that many thousands of people throughout New Zealand mu6t have hailed with deligh.; tho courago and determination Mr Fraser has shown, in undertaking'so unpleasant a task. But ho knows better than to expect anything eke but depreciation and obstruction from tho party that is responsible for.the maintenance of the syßtcni, for so many years, in spite of general condemnation. When Hercules returned from the cleansing of theAup <\ stables, was he not derided becauso he ad' not carried off the girdle of the Queen of the Amazons, or brought the goHen apples from the garden of the Hespcridcs or brought up Cerberus from Hades?—ho was, of course, afraid of the dog! You must not bo-surprised if-your Government is treated to similar gibss. For many years the system has been regarded' as a public 6candat arid disgrace by people who are capable of taking ft dispassionate view of tho subject, and their condemnation has been mainly based upon three grounds—namely, that (as Mr Fraser says) "it allows good men to be exploited for the benefit of the inefficient, lazy men," that it has a demoralising effect' upon tho men generally,'and that it is the most wasteful system that could possibly be invented. Mr Fraser seems to lay most stre6B upon the first ground; but they have all been proved over and over again, not only in Parliament, but in the press throughout the country. ; It would be impossible to conceive a graver condemnation, and it is difficult to iraagino any defence being 6et up by any person not influenced by political 1 bias. '

As you are awere, the subject was referred to in the course of tho debate on tho Address.in-Reply by one of the SocialistRadical members of that motley crew of " Liberals," Radicals, Socialists, Syndicalists, Anti-militarists.' and Anti-patriou who

constitute the "Libera!" party. Tho speech seems to have gained for the orator considerable kudos, and as a specimen of tho stuff that payees nowadays ior Liberalism tho passage dealing with this subject is worth quoting. Here it is:—"The most humanitarian of all tho benevolent measures that Mr Seddon and Sir Joseph Ward

passed into law was the one that provided for the creation of the 00-operative system, of railway construction, under which any and every man in need was furnished with employment and paid by measurement the fair value of his toil. That law has been

destroyed in order to re-establish the system of contracting profits, and we may expect to witness a speedy return to the pernicious and undesirable practices of keen competi-, tion and sweating." When you had the privilege of listening to this deliverance in the House, you cannot have failed to notico that tho orator simply ignored the objections that have been raised session after session, and tho overwhelming evidence in support of them. To describe - a metfiure as " humanitarian " or , " benevolent" or

"democratic" seems to be sufficient justification for it, no matter what the actual or probable consequences of it may be. Indeed, 1 don't know any better way of differentiating the Socialist-Radical from the true Liberal than to describe the Liberal as a politician who considers it necessary to have regard to the probable consequences of measures, 'whilstthe Radical amply ehuts his,eyes and 6ays, "Oh! damn the conse-' quences." It has been'said by a French writer that " Charity causes half the suffering that. it relieves, but that it cannot relievo half the suffering it causes"; and there is reason to fear that some "humanitarian" measures cause more and greater evils than they cure. It would be difficult to conceive tho possibility of any measure producing greater evils than those that havo been attributed to the co-operativo system; and if the orator's description of it iJ correct when he calls it " the most humanitarian of all the benevolent measures that Mr Seddon and Sir Joseph "Ward passed into law," ono wonders what the others must be like. Is it any .wonder that, in a country so besetted as ours is with sham political " humanitarianism " of this kind, the arm of statesmanship is paralysed, and that the Governor's Speech and the Financial Statement are described

by Liberals of this kind as bald and barren because you ,and your colleagues scorn to make U6e of these documents for tho ignoblo purpose of deluding tho people with meaningless phrases and glittering generalities of the kind which they ha\o been led to expect year after year? i Why our orator. should have bracketed Sir Joseph WaTd with Mr Seddon us being entitled to the credit of this most humani-

tarian oE all benevolent measures, it is difficult to understand. I feel euro Sir Joseph Ward never claimed any share of it, for nobody knows better that the co-operative system was Mr Seddon's very own contribution to the policy of the Ballance Government, just as the Lands for Settlement scheme was John M'Senzie's. Sir Joseph's contribution was the Advances to Settlers 6ystem, and it is but bare justice to him to say that,'whilst a 6 a project it was considered the most risky, as a tried and tested policy measure it- has proved the most successful—beneficent it certainly has proved, but I doubt .whether its author would fee! flattered if anyone described it as " benevolent " It may be worth while reminding our orator that the key-word of politics should not be Benevolence, but Justice. A Government cannot be benevolent or even good, it can simply be just; for'a Government can sacrifice nothing. If it attempts to be kind as to the property and interests of others in,one case, injustice results in other cases, and Justice demands that one set of interests shall not be sacrificed to another. . . As regard? the 00-operative system, then, Mr' Seddon was entitled to 6ay, as the Knight said to Alice, " It's my own invention"; and he was as proud of it as the Knight was of the frying-pan of his own invention that hung from his . saddle—and with as much cause. How proud he was of it is shown by tho following sentence from ■his Public Works Statement of 1894:—" An article in explanation of the system has been prep&red by the Under-Secretary for Public Works, and will appear in 'the next issue of 'The New Zealand Official Year Book.' Copies of this article will be sent to England and elsewhere, and the Government confidently expects to hear of the schemo being largely adopted in the carrying out of public works in other countries." The system'has never, so far 1 as lam aware, been adopted in England; but all those of. the Australian States in which tho Labour-Socialists have succeeded in securing control of the Government—that is, all except Victoria—have, unfortunately for themselves; tried a system of day-labour relief-works somewhat similar to ours. Referring to Victoria, I find in Mr Seddon'a Statement of 1692 the following sentence: — " I have received communications from the colony of Victoria, and I am' given to understand that the co-operative system ha 3 now been introduced in the construction of public works in that colony." The Victorian Government did, I understand, givo the system of day-labour a trial; but, if so, it must havo been discarded prior to 1903, for I find that in that year the Inspector-general of Public Works,'_ writing on the subject, said:—"Reference is mado, to a statement by Mr Catani that some work carried out by this department by daylabour cost 50 per cent, more, than contra'ct price. ..... I also reported on tho matter, and had to admit an excess of 40 per cent. . . '. Payments were not made at a fixed rate-per day, but for piece-work, the prices for which gradually [enlarged from something approximating a fair Contract to extravagant rates. At a late period the system was abolished,, and the work completed on small contracts at. more reasonable prices, but still in excess of fair contract .rates. ... The contract system may be-accepted as thoroughly established for.Government works in this: State, and to be unlikely to undergo any change. I have no doubt as to its advantages over tho day-labour system for Government works when it can bo employed, which may be assumed to be at least on. of Government construction operations.. Tho fact that the contractor makes his profit, or should do so, is far more than compensated for in the savings of supervision. It also obviates the necessity of Government 'investing large suras in plant. . .... , I do not think it possible to eliminate Government stroke on Government works. .. I am sure a tendency to laxity or 'taking it'easy' . . • would become tho rule." To show hov thoroughly Mr Davidson's conclusions are justified one has- only to refer to the results in South Australia and Western Australia, and the man-on-the-job scandal in connection with certain works carried out quite recently by the Commonwealth Labour Government. Taking South Australia first, we find tho Commissioner of Public Works stating quite recently that tho- men engaged tin certain drainage works at Port Adelaide were doing 20 per cent, more work than they had been doing under tho 'regime of the Verran Labour Government.

My information regarding West Australia is somo years old, but it in very striking:-r " Tho Premier has given an unqualified condemnation of tho prineiplo of the Government carrying out of public works by day labour. Ho said that after a year of experience he realised that it was hopeless, even with the beet officers and men, to put into work which was supervised by the Government that push, that go, and that vim which were absolutely necessary w the successful carrying out of any work." Since then Labour Government has got tho upper hand in Weei Australia, and the wasteful 6\-6tem condemned by Mr Rawson has probablv been restored. What has come to be known as tho man-on-the-job (scandal in connection with certain works carried out by the Commonwealth Labour Government is so recent that you probablj know more about it than I do. The men were receiving 9s a day; with payment for all wet days on which they/ commenced work, and vet the state of matters was such that the Government refused to produce for' the information of Parliament the reports of their own inspectors ! One of the reforms now being carried out by the new Liberal Ministry is the sweeping away of tho system that has led to such scandalous waste.

But New South Wales is the real home of this rotten system, for it was flourishing thero os far back as 1892 under the SeeO'Sullivan Ministry. At an inquiry held in that year by the Public Service Board, an engineer of the Public Works Department had the courage to make this etitcment:— "The labourers generally in Now South Wales have been demoralised. They have been so propped-up and so assisted that I do not think they will ever go back to the labour conditions when a man knew ho should give a fair day's work for a fair day's pay. The result was that New South Wales got the reputation of being the most spendthrift Stato in the British dominions, and the Government, finding it impossible to borrow any; longer, was constrained to appeal to private enterprise to take'off. its hands the swarms, of men for whom' it could no longer find employment. Since then New South Wales has had a period of good seasons, high prices, and easy borrowing;, a Labour Government in power and the same wasteful method of carrying ou,t public works, and with what results? A deficit of £1,228,385 for last year, and, a6,a consequence, the Government finds it impossible to raise money by borrowing in the usual way, and enters into an arrangement, with a'firm of contractors in London for the construction of railways to the amount of £3,000,000, tho firm finding the money. A few years ago Colonel Jarvis, of tho Canadian Department of Agriculture, in giving his impressions of New Zealand-after spending a month amongst us, is reported as having expressed surprise at the slow progress of our railroad undertakings. When he was told of the time occupied on some of them he could not help contrasting them with the construction of a 2500-mile line in Canada-700 miles of it over exceptionally difficult country full of engineering diffi-culties-a task that was completed in five years! Ho courteously added that "he presumed that- those in authority hero had ' their reasons for the methods adopted, but he questioned the wisdom of tho policy." It would seoin that tho colonel cannot have

discovered during his holiday that our system of railway construction was a system of relief works, "tho most humanitarian of tho manv benevolent measures introduced by Mr Seddon and Sir Joseph Ward," and therefore the most benevolent in the world; that tho benevolent authors of this system, with the view of distributing their beneficence as widely as possible amongst their subjects, carried on about 25 railways at the same time in various parts of their dominions, and that, in order to make tho work last/ as long as possible, they made a point of.not completing more than about, two or three miles of any ono railway in a year, and in one ca6o they had succeeded in spending £145,000 in tho construction of three miles of railway and in spreading the work over six years' Tho colonel cannot have been aware that our Public Works Department was a benevolent institution, and that our railway construction was carried out on the most approved' humanitarian and cqualitarian principles, which requiro that every man in need shall have a right .to have work provided for him by the Government, and that the efficient workman and the loafer must receive as nearly as possible equal pay, as this is tho only way in which competition and sweating can bo prevented and every man can get a square deal! However true all this may be, you would probably find that, as a means of gaining political kudos, sham "humanitarian" legislation is better than • tho best administrative reforms,, and consequently, tho temptation" must be very great to forget the wise rule that, if it is not necessary to legislate, it is necessary not to legislate. Nothing would better please a disgruntled, irrespousbile Opposition, auch as von have to deal with, than that their gibing and jeering should drive you into proposing some hasty social or industrial legislation, for the worse it was the better they would like it-I am, etc., J. MacGbegob. Dunedin, August 26, 1913.