TEN-MINUTE TALKS WITH WORKERS.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 16506, 6 August 1919, Page 4

TEN-MINUTE TALKS WITH WORKERS.

(The Ttees Trade Supplement.) THE PARTNERS. If you have read Robert Louis Stevenson’s stirring tale, "Kidnapped.” you will remember how David Balfour and .Hair Break, when they a ere hiding on the mountains and had nothing to cal but. a little porridge, added to their toed by groping for (nun in the stream. Gioping, for trout is catching them with your naked hand, by feeling for them vory gently under tire hanks and between the stones, and grabbing one, it you can, when yon fee! him. With much effort David and Alan managed to catch a Lw small li.sh. 1 lie steam trailer goes nut into the deep where the fish shoal by tho million. It has every modern appliance steam winches, miles of net. storage for hundreds of tons.of fish, a skilled master, and experienced hands. Alan and David rouid only supply themselves with one or two small fish. A modern steam trawler can teed a sizable town. Tho difference in remits Is enormous. In one ease you have individual ami primitive effort, in the ether the union in modern industry ol three partners, each contributing a share to the find result, but each de [K-ndent on the oilier two. The. first of these partners is, of Ounsc. Labour. The trawler tydl lie in harbour till it rots if no men go on beard to get up steam and head her to tho fishing grounds. Nowadays pniotic.il men of affairs, anxious only to obtain tho best results, have learnt to regard Labour as what it is, namely, one of the partners in industry. It is neither more nor less. But if Labour is to maintain its title to rank as a partner it must act as a paitucr. It n-.ust contribute its share to tho joint concern gladly and fully. That done, In.hour ,is entitled to a full share of tho results achieved.

AVHAT IS CAPITAL? The second partner is Capital. In tho earliest days of human existence on the earth man must have caught his fish as David and Alan caught their trout, but mingled with tho hones of later men are found tho rough fish hooks which they had invented to aid them in their fishing. These fish hooks then represented capital just ns in our times the steam trawler docs. So many people make the mistake that capital is another word for money. Generally things are capital. The man whoso patient labour made the fish hooks was entitled to a share of the catch, and to-day tho claim of Capital to rank as one of tho partners in industry is just. if by some unfortunate miracle tho whole of the capital of Great Britain—its railroads, it« mines, its buildings, its works, its plant, its tools, its roads—were whirled skyward in tho night, we should once more bo in a mass of unaided men struggling firmly with tho bare gifts of nature for a'miserable livelihood. Every man who saves instead of spending, who works to-day and postpones enjoyment till to-morrow, who sows in spring in hope of a harvest in autumn, adds to tho available amount of capita!, adds, that is, to the apparatus by which Labour increases its own efficiency. Tho third partner is Brain. If yon watch a village smithy, where Hie blacksmith, who is in part a capitalist, works alongside his man, you may think that so far as the smithy is concerned it would make little difference if master were man and man master. As the scale of industry grows, as works get larger and larger, buying rati materials and selling finished articles in every comer of the globe, the need for men of brains, able to direct and organise all these lines of activity, becomes obvious. AA'o cannot go back to the methods of our fordfa+ijors ; in attempting to do so wo should, like tho Bolshevists in Russia, bring our own civilisation down about our cars, for there aro a dozen mouths to food where there was once liut one. For tho groat operations of modern industry the best brains of ties country are required. Brain ranks with Capital and Labour as a partner in industry. A study of the condition of this country three of four hundred years ago sliows that wonderful progress has beer, made. Progress is many-sided. It is moral, spiritual, political, civic. These ai-e the fined aspects of progress, hut behind them lies economic progress, tho winning of a life more full of tho good things of life; and this economic progress has been duo to the growth in rumbers and capacity of the three partners of industry. Their future depends upon the recognition by each of them of their mutual dependence and their common interest.