South Canterbury Times, FRIDAY, DECEMBER 30, 1881.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2738, 30 December 1881, Page 2

South Canterbury Times, FRIDAY, DECEMBER 30, 1881.

“ By the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread.” The primal curse seems to have aftected the British in the profouudest manner, seems to have sunk so deeply into their heart that no hope seems to be entertained of its original force and signification ever being weakened. Before that dreadful dictum the British intelligence,. as it were, crouches to the dust, and this so abjectly that the very wish that might be father to the thought seldom arises that by some possibility its crushing weight might be lightened, still less that it might be evaded altogether. This is a helpless acceptance of an original fate that, while it says nothing for the piety or reverence of the sufferers, says almost as little for their commonsense. “ The heathen are not so,” and there are civilized people who are not so either. We yesterday published a remark made some time ago by a fellow-townsman who’ recently returned from a visit to the United States, that “in the application of machirvry generally we are as far behind the Americans as the Maoris before we came were behind us,” and no o'ne who knows much of the matter will deny the soft impeachment. It may be said that 'as a rule the Americans do nothing by baud and muscular strength that they can get a

machine and an artificial motor to do. We, on the contrary, as a rule refrain from using machinery while the work can possibly be done by hand. The Britisher's boast is his muscle, the product of (mythical) roast beef and beer, and he could not continue to make it his boast unless he maintained its value by keeping it fully employed. It is about time that “ By the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread ” should be looked upon as the curse it was intended to be, not necessarily an unavoidable one, for we see thousands who never feel it, but a curse to be avoided if possible, and when avoidance is impossible, to be mitigated as much as may be. The day may be long coming when no man shall be seen employed from morning till night and from year’s end to year’s end, at tasks that demand the constant exercise of bis whole physical strength ; but there are unquestionably too many so employed amongst us, more, that is, than there need be. They do not complain perhaps ; they have been accustomed to it and do not feel it a hardship. But it is a hardship, as a comparison of the lives they lead with those of others shows at a glance. Life can have few enjoyments for those who are condemned to severe physical labor from childhood to old age,as so many of ns are, and if their life is worth having it is barely so.' These toilers cannot help themselves ; the rest bold out no helping hand to them, and these being unassisted the next generation must comprise its quota of drudges also. We ought to set about the reduction of this slavishness to the lowest point possible, for the sake of those who are at present compelled to suffer under it, for the sake of those of succeeding generations who, if the reduction is not made, must similarly suffer, and for the sake also of those who escape the heaviest toils—for as we are all members of one body, these must be affected in many ways by the enslavement of others. We need to modify our sentiment concerning hard work. No one would choose a life of hard labor if he could avoid it, but we have not the same feeling, as we ought to have, for others. He who likes not hard work himself should be ashamed to ask man or beast to work hard for him. We often hear a phrase, a horny-handed sons of toil,” the very existence of which should be considered a scandal. “ Sons of toil!” Born to it! No man amongst us who is not himself a “ son of toil,” should ever repeat the words without feeling shame that so little is being done to free that large family from the life of toil they are now bound to accept. Laborare est orare, work is prayer, no doubt, but it is not in the effort, it is in the result that the virtue lies. We want things done, not the doing of them. Let us then set our wits to work, —if we have any—to relieve as far as we can the present and future generations from physical drudgeries that cramp the mind and prevent the man from becoming wliat under a better system he might. It is not good for man to live in idleness, neither is it good for him to live in slavery. He needs occupation, but not drudgery. Let us imbue ourselves, and especially those of us who are not “ sons of toil,” with the idea that no man nor beast should be required to labor severely if it can be avoided, and a thousand ways will soon be perceived in which the laborer’s toil can be eased. One need not go far in this good town of Timaru to find men doing with infinite labor what a steam or a gas or a water engine would do as well or better. But the men happened to be at hand, unfortunately, and the engine did not. We say unfortunately because, being at hand they needed and must have employment, hard though it be, and possibly, that being the case, they can do the work cheaper than an engine ; but their undertaking it tends to perpetuate a system under which a man is made a mere intelligent machine,that in many cases is scarcely required to exercise intelligence at all. We do not care to mention instances ; they can be seen in all directions. It is a system that we ought to be ashamed of. We ought to believe that man is worthy of a better fate than condemnation to the monotonous turning of a crank or the little less monotonous oscillation of a pick, and we should strive to work out this belief. Let us begin with the plainest drudgeries, and the exercise of our sympathies and ingenuity in the removal of these will so improve them that we should at once be able to proceed to lighten in other directions the pressure of the curse pronounced on Adam, for those upon whom it now presses so heavily. In other words, let us go in for machinery,and emulate our American cousins in their efforts to make the unconscious forces of nature do all the work that we want doing.