THE WAVE OF UNREST.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LX, Issue 143786, 9 May 1912, Page 3

THE WAVE OF UNREST.

A BISHOP’S REMEDY. ’ NEWCASTLE, April 30. In the course of In's annual address at the seventeenth Synod of tho Newcastle Diocese, Dr. Stretch, Bishop of Newcastle, dwelt at length upon tho remarkable wave of unrest at present .sweeping over the civilised world. The Bishop did not confine himself to industrial unrest, though this was tho dominant note. The Bishop made tho recent English coal strike the basis of his remarks. “Slow indeed,” said tho Bishop, “should a man be to speak from so great a distance on the merits of the great and complex questions raised by what is called the coal strike. But there are certain large issues and important comments upon them from various sources to which I desire to draw attention. These recurring troubles arc auroly.tho symptoms of a widespread dissatisfaction which wise men will try to understand and remedy. “In a novel 1 have been reading, a young girl brought up on the Continent says: ‘English life, as a rulo, is, I think, rather like boxes, one inside tho other.’ The reply was; ‘Well, the great thing is that the boxes should lit comfortably into or.o another, is it not? apid 1 think that, on the whole, we’ve come to fit pretty well in England.’ I suppose,” continued the Bishop, “a good many people visitidg England have had the same thought, hut the trouble is, does Almighty God intend tho people te go on living in separate boxes; and what will happen if some of the divisions cease to be contented and decide to hurst their box. “There is then a very grave discontent with tho social order. Nor is any one much better satisfied with tho economic maxims. There is a revolt, probably too strong, against classical political economy, and as one reads the curious, clover, merciless examination of tho trade of tho world ; it does occur to one that it is about time that some one wrote political economy in terms of the consumer, rather than of the producer, or the distributor. For it is the consumer says tho last word, and he is least considered of all.”

After dealing with the statements of a number of authorities on the subject, the Bishop said: “You will ask me what have wo to do with these subjects. How can we help? 1 have quoted from all sides. Ido not pretend to agree with some of tho statements, but they should bo noticed, for they are evidence of an idea which is growing to be dominant, and tho world’s history is largely the record of dominant ideas; and it is our duty to-try and grasp their meaning and force, and how and why they appeal to men. Wo in Australia can at any rate set ourselves to avoid tho segregation of classes. In this there are faults on both sides.. Wo can set ourselves against detestable snobbishness. Wo can try to make our civilisation mean ‘men ajid w'omon ns such,’ for it is a poor tiling if it does not. That is what Bishop Goto means when he says that ‘the living wage of tho worker must be a first charge ’ He moans that no contracts must bo signed by Christian people which are underlined with tho red streak of the blood, or suffering, or stunting of tho development, bodily or mentally, of man. woman, or child. That cannot lie roally necessary unless the devil is king. To this a leaderwriter in a Sydney paper replies that the Bishop is talking nonsense, because ho is flying in the face of tho law of supply and demand, which acts like tho law of gravity. A writer w'ho can solemnly state that the law of supply anil demand acts like the law of gravity, at a time when all England demands coal and ran get no supply, has a truly pathetic faith in economic formulas, and, if it were true, the demand for a firing wage should find supply by the action of this law of gravity. Civilisation can just as easily adjust itself to tho law' of consideration of men and women as such as to the law of cheap coeds, and as profitably, for tho increased purchasing power of the masses is a far greater stimulus to production than the cultivation of millionaires.”