WORK BEST HOBBY

Te Aroha News, Volume XLI, Issue 6440, 19 January 1924, Page 3

WORK BEST HOBBY

LORD LEVIERHULME’S DOCTRINE RELATIONS OF CAPITAL AND LABOR There arrived in Wellington recently one of the world’s greatest disciples of the doctrine of work as a hobby, Lord Leverhulme, a candid enemy of the principle of “go slow in any circumstances, and a man so successful that his name is a household word. f Lord Leverhulme holds that more employment is found for others by all who do their day’s work, not only honestly, but to the utmost of their capacity. One of his chief pleasures when not at work is dancing, but after dancing till after midnight he leaves orders to be awakened at 4.30 a.m. to commence the days work. , CAPITAL AND LABOR

“One’s great obstacle to good comradeship between Labor and Capital.” wrote Lord Leverhulme in a recent article to the ( Spectator, “is that a Labor man who receives, say, £2 to £3 per week is convinced that he is underpaid when he sees that a Capitalist, say Henry Ford, receives anything from £200,000 to £400,000 per week, or, sky, ten to twenty million pounds sterling a year. The Labour man is certain, to ask himself whether all is well in the industrial world when one so-called Capitalist can receive so much money for his work as is received by 100,000 to 200,000 Labour men each paid £2 a week. He fails to grasp that the services of none of us can possibly be paid for other than out of the value of the product created. If the Labour man does not grasp this fact, then he argues that Labour, and not brains or capital, creates all the wealth. In this state of mind the Labour man, whether he is an I.W.W. or not, very often adopts a policy of what is called ‘ca’ canny,’-believing that it is his only method to get justice, and yet the difficulty of living for the whole community and especially for the Labour men who adopt it, is increased enormously. It does not add to social comfort nor decrease social inequalities, but the opposite. HENRY FORD’S MILLIONS “Let us disregard altogether the ten or twenty millions sterling Henry Ford may receive on the narrow margin fo £lO profit per car —probably the narrowest margin that cars can possibly be sold on in any country in the world—and concentrate our thoughts on the fact that; whilst this might make Henry Ford ten or twenty millions sterling a year for himself, he makes also one or two hunddred millions for the purchasers of Ford cars, and finds employment for hundreds of thousands of workmen at high wages in maintaining the cars and roads, and in driving cars, and, in fact, that Ford is the creator of a transaction that not only thus pays the Labour man and the public, but has a direct influence in raising the scale of social comfort and welfare of the Labour man all over the world.”

Seventy-two years of age, Lord Leverhulme still says he would break his heart if he did not get plenty of work. “I get up every morning at 4.30. A few light gymnastics, a bath, and a cup of tea, and then the day’s work begins. There is generally a pile of reports awaiting me, from New Zealand, Australia, the Pacific Islands, India, China, almost anywhere. They must be digested and decisions made. Breakfast is at 7.30, and I am at my office at 8.30. My workers can see me working and I them. And so reports, decisions, work all day, and I am lucky if I can get away in the evening without a full bag to go over at home.” One of his greatest pleasures is dancing, and it is said that he danced almost nightly on board the Niagara.

Lord Leverhulme’s visit to New Zealand is part of a world tour, inspecting his firm’s depots and factories. From Wellington he goes on to Sydney.