IN SERIOUS VEIN

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 74, Issue 6365, 2 May 1947, Page 5

IN SERIOUS VEIN

“STEADY FOLKS” A CANDID WORD FROM A CHURCH OF SCOTLAND MEMBER Thinking people will, it is felt, agree in the main with the following article written by a Scottish worker, in a recent issue of Life and Work, the record of the Church of Scotland. The writer states:—

I’m a shipyard worker, usually dum'b when my mates are airing their views on what is wrong with the worldj but to-night I’ve something to say; and I’ll tell you why. I’ve been spending a Saturday watching people and listening to people—and “takin’ notes”; .and all of a sudden I think I see something. We’re going to throw away the real thing we have been fighting for in the labour movement for more than 50 years, if we’re not careful.

I’ve been a labour man (small and big “1” both) all my life. I still am. I’m proud of what has been achieved in the removing of injustices and the breaking down of evil conditions of work. I know it has been done by all parties—but I wonder if it would have been done by (any if it hadn’t been for all the pioneers who felt the sufferings of others as if they were their own. My granny was a very old woman, and I’ve often reminded myself that within her lifetime young boys were driven up industrial chimneys as sweeps, and children were employed for long days in grim, unhealthy factories. We-ve had to fight, because so mjany people felt no wrong in these things. We’ve won a good deal—though the gains are still very unequally shared—we are still suffering for instance from the housing conditions created when “anything would do for a miner’s row”—and there is still a long way to go. New Discipline Needed

But I’m not going to be political in what I’m| saying now. I’m. wanting to speak quite straight to my fellowworkers who are now, many of them, earning £5, £6, £7 a week and more. I want to say to them and to their wives and families: “Steady, folks, with that money! Steady with all the new things it opens up* for you! Don’t let it go to your heads! See that you keep the best of the old discipline and the old thrift!” I’m not being critical in a bad sense; but I’ve been watching—and noticing. I’ve been seeing families with £l2 ;a week coming into their homes who aren’t any better off than they were with £s—they just let it melt away. I know one case like that —they’re not so unusual—where they spioke away £2 and gamble away £3 every week. It makes me boil inside —Owen and Hardie didn’t give their lives for that. Then there are others who are not so bad—but they have lost grip somehow. don’t know what sensible saving is. They don’t seem to realise that “big money” puts them in a new position to help others and to support the causes which they used to be too poor to help—causes that used to help them. They’re missing what it’s for this extra money. It’s (not all for themselves, is it? If it is, we’re breeding a new race of the worst kind of “capitalists”—from the other end of the “social scale.” We’re taking over all the things we rightly hated in many of the people in power —and making them our own. We’re becoming the new callous folk, the new. selfish folk, who are only out for themselves—if We act like this. For the Sake of Other Folk

There are plenty who haven’t let it go to their heads—they’re, the good, steady stuff that keep our country on an even keel; but there’s no use pretending. that this lack of balance I’m writing* about isn’t widespread. (Sometimes it appears suddenly in the younger generation of a fine, steady family.) And what I want to say is: we nfust reckon with it—for the sake of our children, for the sake of the future. It’s like a plague. It’s infectious. It’s in the air. So—steady, folks! We have an extra bit of steadiness to put into the life around us, if we are trying to live the Christian life.

And one more practical point. If money; is distributed more evenly, is the Kirk going to suffer? Is it going to be one of the first signs of what you and I (or some of us) might call a more Christian order that there’s going to be less support for the things that matter than there was in the old days? In other words, if the Kirk could count before on the business director’s £lOO, can it count on £1 from a hundred! of us now? If not —well, I won’t say it.

We’re a new experiment in the Scots character. We’ve got plenty of temptations. So—steady, folks!