THE INDUSTRIAL WORLD

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22065, 22 September 1933, Page 3

THE INDUSTRIAL WORLD

NEWS AND NOTES

By J. T. Paul.

Education is dust and ashes unless it brings happiness with it. If I were a multi-millionaire I would institute a chair of happiness in every university and college. The conscious pursuit of happiness and the fighting down of unhappiness . is just as worth while as struggling against difficulty and vice.—Lord Meston in an address at the annual assembly of faculties at the University College, London. THRESHING MILL WORKERS. As the employers’ assessors refused to agree to a definite clause being placed in the award about shifting time, a Conciliation Council representing the employers and workers in the threshing industry last week came to a deadlock, ine sitting was the third held by the council, and the shifting time question was all that prevented an agreement. ihe employers offered to accede to the workers request for Is 9d an hour as the basic wage and to pay for piecework at the rate of 17s 6d for 1000 bushels for wheat and barley and 15s 6d for oats. These rates, however, were contingent upon tne employees consenting to forego a clause on shifting time. , , .. It was finally decided to adjourn the dispute sine die, but if neither side notified the commissioner within five days that it wanted a further sitting, the council would automatically lapse. BACON CURERS’ DISPUTE. The Conciliation Council failed to reach an agreement in the Auckland dispute in this industry. After consideration by the parties represented, it was to refer the dispute to the Arbitration Court, with the exception of several maCh a7e«pr.?«. proposed a mioimum wage ranging from la an hour tor Itore hands to Is 10d for men engaged in marking down, chopping, boning, and cur ing. The employment of females was sought at wages . commencing at IS S a week and increasing to 38s bd alter tne third year. The wages proposed tor boys started at 15s, -rising to 47s 6d af i e n a 6 filed 6 schedule of counter proposals the union proposed a wage of £4 a week for labourers, £5 5s for first -mal -good men and bacon cuiers, and £4 os tor all £ther bands outside female workers and boys. For the latter the scale submitted ranged from 17s 6d a week to £3 up to the age of 21; female workers to be pam at the rat e 'f £2 2s a week. A scale for drivers was also filed, the wages asked being from £4 to £4 10s a week. The rates asked by the union were a little less than those at present being paid. OIL FUEL AND COAL MINERS. “In 1913 1,300,000 tons of shipping used oil as ’fuel, whereas in 1932 nearly 50 per cent, of the world’s shipping was using oil as fuel, thus displacing coal, said Mr George Hall, M.P., in the House of Commons. “If the railway companies in this country put into operation an oil-electric engine they could with 2,000,000 tons of oil do that which reouires 13,000,000 tons of coal at the preset time. If that should happen, it wuld mean that no fewer than 40.000 miners, who are now employed in the production of coal , for the use ot the railways, would be thrown out of employ men t—displaced by oil. THE IMMEDIATE PROBLEM. It is not enough to work for increased material prosperity or • decreased hours of labour, says Mr A. Barratt Brown, principal of Ruskin College. The immediate problem is that of, the unemployed. who have an enforced and unprovisioned leisure, spare time but no spare cash. To enjoy spare time one wants spare cash. It is not enough to provide the unemployed with the means of entertainment and recreation, .because recreation, as ordinarily understood, does not yield the satisfaction of steady work. Machinery has put a power into our hands which; if we use, it right, will enable us all not only to enjoy what we need in the way of material wealth, but also to enjoy every minute of time that comes to us, apd will enable us to want to live as long as our hours last. Some of the happiest people I know are the people who are never at a loss what to do next. TECHNOCRACY AND FORCE. A correspondent asks what is the present place of technocracy among the many schemes for the dissipation of the economic chaos. He remarks that only a short time agp the technocrats were confident that they alone held the solution of the social problem. Great hopes were feentred in the “ Continental Congress, which was a short time ago arranged for session, in Chicago. The aim, according to the Christian Science Monitor, was to rebuild society as a gigantic machine, where being well fed would count for more than liberty or religion. According to the Monitor the congress fizzled out—it failed to produce the new national association for which it was called. It produced instead a split between engineers and radicals. Finally it came to an unexpected halt when the closing banquet was called off. Not enough seats had been sold to warrant holding the banquet, the startled technocrats were informed. The curtain fell as the few enthusiasts for a new era-who had bought tickets hurried to get their money back. What brought the split was the issue of violence in revolutionary methods, according to a spokesman for the AllAmerica Technological Society. He charged Mr Howard Scott, of New York, the leader of technocracy in its cometlike brilliance and eclipse, with advocating force. Mr Scott’s own description of the process by which a new industrial society would come in appeared to observers to fit in closely with revolutionary technique, as described almost simultaneously at the University of Chicago. A new radical movement is developing out of as it is viewed by some of the participants in the "congress.” Its plans for achieving power were regarded as quite similar to those that have been standard ever since the Bolsheviks used them with success in Russia in 1917. . _ In outlining the aims of Technocracy, Inc., Mr Scott, its director, said it must first have an organisation, it must train it, and then it must discipline it for the capacity to act. Someone rose from the floor to ask if the industrial revolution envisioned would come in gradually, or whether the "capacity to act ” would be employed by the Technocrats at a strategic moment, “ That is a question of tactics,” replied Mr Scott, "and tactics is not for this meeting, but for our organisation.” The engineers of the Technological Society interpreted Mr Scott’s philosophy of change ns outside the law. The society had joined in the call for the congress in the hope of meeting on common ground. But as one of the leaders commented they had not known previously just what Technocracy, Inc., stood for, and after Mr Scott had explained it early in the sessions, they determined to with"We are composed almost exclusively of engineers gathered together for the purpose of solving the problem of the equitable distribution of wealth,” continued the Technological Society member. "We stand entirely for orderly means with the Constitution. “Technocracy did not seem to have a programme. As far as we could see. the onlv tangible thing in it was violence.’ When the local association pulled out, there was not much left in the congress save a miscellaneous collection, including local “bug club " members, " soap-boxers,” radicals. Communists, a few anarchists, a few engineers, and several clergymen. Such was the analysis of one of the men who helped promote the meetings. In what expectedly proved the closing address, Mr Scott pictured the goal of a society operated by the personnel of industry. It would have 92 functional or industrial divisions. “Those who functionally operate the State,” he remarked, “ are the State.” In his conception man was a mechanical energy, consuming (inachine. He commented on hope as ‘ one of the most vicious of vices.” To everyone he promised inescapable prosperity under the ordered system of distribution to result from Technocracy s programme. A question came from the floor about the liberty of the citizens. “I am not the slightest bit concerned whether we take away their liberty,” he replied. “If they have the highest purchasing power and security possible, I don’t care if you take away liberty.

To the initiated the newest thing _in Mr Scott’s planning was his description of Technocratic money. He called it energy certificates. By recording on each by whom and for what it was used, and collecting all the certificates, he declared it could be shown even how many lipsticks were sold every hour, and production gauged accordingly.

THE SOCIALIST TREND. The recent French Socialist Congress resulted in the unexpected revelation of a movement within the group towards National Socialism, known in Germany as the Nazis. , . Tne Congress was ostensibly called to pass a vote of censure on the indiscipline of some 80 Deputies in the Chamber, and it faithfully fulfilled its purpose. But, in doing so, it laid bare the frank recognition of a section of the Socialist body that times had changed and that Socialism even in France must change with them if it was to survive. This section, not yet very numerous, but clearly imbued with fervour and force, believes that Socialism as a politically constructive force (if it ever was that) has failed; that the day of internationalism is oyer before it has even dawned; that doctrinaire Marxism is based on a fallacy; and that a new inspiration is in the field. They are looking beyond questions whether the Socialist Party shall take part in a “ bourgeois ” Government, or vote “ bourgeois ” military credits and Budgets. They have seen Socialist groups in the Chamber vote against these things and bring Governments down one after another, and they begin to think that the Socialism of Karl Marx and Leon Blum was, far from leading them into the promised land, leading them only into the desert.

The Revolutionaries, they observe, are without a revolution, the Evolutionists fail to evolve, and the Reformists have secured no reforms.

The Socialist policy is thus negative in result, and the young men whose class hitherto supported it are intelligent enough to know this. “ What.” they ask, “ has Socialism to offer us? "• At the Congress, M. Blum, strictly doctrinaire, could only point to his own convictions, unshaken by 40 years’ experience, and affirm that in the great cause of liberty and justice the young men must not only be taught revolutionary virtues but also the virtue of patience. This condemnation of Socialism to sterile opposition in the vague hope of something arriving on the horizon might have done for a leisured age. It does not appeal to the youth of the movement. The doctrinaires of the party have lately accustomed themselves to the thought that the world crisis is working for Socialism. But there is no sign of it. The unemployed and hungry man —as was pointed but in the Congress —is not a revolutionary in the Socialist sense; he is a creature of misery and despair, ready to follow any political adventurer. "Hitler enrolled him in his hundreds of thousands; his success was founded, on Germany’s 5.000 ; 000 unemployed.” And, again: "If Fascism were only a mercenary movement at the service of the banks and great industries, it would never have acquired its dynamic force in the middle classes of Italy and Germany.” The class that is becoming class-con-scious in France is just this middle class, usually called the petite bourgeoisie. It has seen the German middle class on the verge of being proletarianised, and it will not allow itself to go the same way without a struggle. Its ranks are seething with unrest and exasperation. It is here that the minority in the Socialist Party, perceive their scope for action. Socialism, they say, must keep in touch with the democracy, with the whole nation, and especially with the middle classes, and not cut itself off from all but a section limited ,in numbers and ideas. There is no future for strict proletarian internationalism, and if the imagination of the middle-class masses is tO be touched, if its dynamic force is to be set in motion, then there must be a change in the principles and programme of Socialism. . • j s There can be no doubt in the mind of the most casual observer that large masses of the French public are in a state of suppressed revolt against the slackness and general disorder that have paralysed the machinery of all States. They are equally disgusted with parliamentary methods and the ruck of politicians, whether of the Right or Left. As the result of the Russian, Italian, and German experiments the masses in France are permeated with 'the notion that a cure for these evils can be brought about only by some movement that carries with it the strong element of authority. The Socialist, Congress showed that there are Socialists who think that their party should make a bid for the honour and rewards of initiating such a policy. And they plainly admit that if Socialism is to carry it out, the clement of. nationalism must find a prominent place in its programme.