TOPICS OF THE TIMES.

Southland Times, Issue 19395, 8 November 1924, Page 4

TOPICS OF THE TIMES.

A schoolmaster on the west coast of the North Island is reported to have discovered that fifty per cent, of his class, including some girls, had indulged in smoking on at least one occasion. His reception of this information was the administration, of the strap to those who confessed. He is an optimist if he thinks that strong-arm methods of this kind will cure smoking. What he has done is to teach the children to be more cautious about telling the truth in the future.

Labour has won to political power largely on its claim to protect and serve the needs of the under dog. It is now called upon to fulfil its promise to bring about the economic millennium, says the Round Table. The future of the working class, the future of democracy, depends upon whether the Labour movement can recognise that it is not the State but the trade unions themselves that must undertake the function of the capitalist, not by using the power of the State to destroy capital or hinder individual initiative, but by learning to beat the capitalist at his own game. The worker has to learn to save, to use his savings to acquire control of industry, to select competent managers, to support them by giving them maximum efficiency in his work, to acquire the confidence of the investing public in order to obtain more capital. If he has the selfcontrol, the intelligence and the leadership to take on his own shoulders the economic responsibilities hitherto performed for him by the capitalist and the employer, we are at the opening of an era of industrial democracy which will have as far-reaching results upon the future of humanity as the era in which the people assumed the responsibility for political government. There is thus before Labour to-day a great chance. It is wavering between a great victory and a great disaster. If it cannot free itself from the hatred-breeding, soul-destroying philosophy of Karl Marx and its State Socialistic fruit; if it persists in trying to eliminate or destroy the capitalist by the use of the power of the State, it is doomed to failure. But if it can show a little of that spirit of enterprise and adventure which is the secret of success of the capitalist; if it can set to work to learn what he does and how he does it, and then dispense with his services because it can do his work for itself, it will solve the problem which has baffled mankind from the start.