THE INDUSTRIAL EFFICIENCY BILL

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23005, 7 October 1936, Page 14

THE INDUSTRIAL EFFICIENCY BILL

TO THE EDITOR. Sir,— May I suggest that emphasis be placed strongly on the public's right to have time for consideration of the Industrial Efficiency Bill? The potentialities of the Bill for the curtailment of liberty even for industrial efficiency is a matter for the people, who are the trustees of liberty based on British ideals. Sectional opinion is valuable, but what any section may feel about the possible usefulness of organisation of industry cannot be allowed to be of account when it impinges on the rights of the individual. The entire freedom of action is curtailed, and we, as citizens of the British Empire, have this only in trust. Unborn generations will rise to curse us if we traffic our freedom for an industrial efficiency which stifles the initiative and freedom of the individual so that the State machine is all powerful. Free speech, the sure buckler, will go under such a system. We have no right to barter or allow our birthright to be taken from us for a mess of pottage in the shape of socalled industrial efficiency. Better were it that we remain as we are, if organisation of industry calls us to surrender as traitors that freedom for which our race has fought through history. It is a sign of low moral outlook and of bankrupt business capacity on the part of those who plan to restrain free men in a system of what is potential tyranny. We are told by high authority in this country that this is the machine age, but man is greater than the machine, and the policy of subduing the best instincts in man by means of regimentation to a few who act as supermen is wrong and bound to end in strife and disaster. The Bill is apparently an attempt by a short cut to a state which can only be reached by the growth of each human being. Individualism in one sense may be dead, but to make the individual a slave of a State machine is quite a different matter. May I ask that this bearing on the matter be taken up by abler men than I? Further, the constitutional idea of British freedom assures to all British citizens protection from dictators. I doubt whether New Zealand can remain British in name and fact if it barters that which New Zealand, as trustee in common with all British countries, led by the Motherland, guarantees her citizens. British subjects from all parts of the Empire cannot be subjected to such treatment without their Mother Country extending her helping hand at the call of her children, wno find that in ignorance a fair dominion has turned traitor to all she and her children hold dear. It is not a Dominion domestic matter purely, but one for all British peoples. In the spirit of liberty must all efforts to serve business efficiency be found.—I am, etc., Thomas Rankine. Frankton Junction, October 5.