TE AWAMUTU COURIER. Printed on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. WEDNESDAY, 26th AUGUST, 1936. COMMUNITY EFFORT.

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 53, Issue 3800, 26 August 1936, Page 4

TE AWAMUTU COURIER. Printed on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. WEDNESDAY, 26th AUGUST, 1936. COMMUNITY EFFORT.

UNITY IS STRENGTH! This, in short, was the story told to a meeting of retailers in Te Awamutu last week when an appeal was made for more regular conferences. Naturally, as the towns’ voluntary non-partisan organisation, the Chamber of Commerce was held forward as the ideal rallying point, and the suggestion should make a wide appeal. The idea of a community interchange of thoughts and aims is particularly opportune just now. A new era is at hand. Change is happening about and amongst all of us. No section of’the community can escape the influence of altered conditions. All the more reason, then, for co-ordinated thought and action. As it was stated to the retailers last week the individual experiences some condition which is either hurtful or capable of being turned to fuller account; as an individual he cannot secure recognition. But, when his experience secures collective force through the agency of such an institution as the Chamber of Commerce, attention is ut once assured. It seems to be that voluntary organisation is the key to government. Constitutional procedure respects the ‘collective opinion; and rightly so. In the town the Chamber of Commerce; in the country the Farmers’ Union—both units have a rightful place—as outlets for public opinion, as rallying points for collective endeavour and as the recognised bureau of activity for the community. What, though, is voluntary organisation ? It is certainly not an act of membership on the payment of subscription. Its real meaning is activity mental alertness rather than financial backing. True it may be that somebody must pay the cost of organisation, 'but an institution which has finance without the interest cf its members is poor indeed. Community organisation can never be secured by conscription. In so far as our changed industrial state has compelled compulsory unionism there is a most interesting experiment. Unionism is not membership, and never will be; it is merely a rallying point for desire, and its incentive is voluntary and not enforced. Hardly would we expect to find a healthy Chamber of Commerce or Farmers’ Union if membership was demanded by statute, and it has yet to be learned whether the conscripted union will grow in spirit as it will in funds. When, in community organisation, it is said that unity means strength, the idea is a mental rather than a physical state. The keynote of it all is desire—the unification of desire in channels of community purpose. After all, in every community there is much that all people share, and the privileges of citizenship are necessarily involved in responsibility. Public welfare is everybody’s welfare. But there is a constitutional way and a rabble way. Unity is strength ! No citizen is beyond the reach of what that means. He shares the effects of public policy as it shapes itself, and so also should he take his rightful place in what makes for unity as the testing ground for strength;