WORK DAYS AND HOLIDAYS.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIC, Issue 13808, 20 January 1909, Page 6

WORK DAYS AND HOLIDAYS.

(By "Tohunga" in Auckland "Herald."; lo tlie uncivilised man Life is a perpetual Holiday, Willi occasional or work; louie civilised man it is a perpetual working umo, with occasional spens ot liolmay. And tne civilised man frequently looks upon the lumig savage with envy, wnile 'Uie savage always looks with wondering eyes upuii tiiu to linn extraordinary wealth oi uie civlliseu. Aiid luo civiliseu man, tno worker, the accumulator oi wealwi, inlierus llie Earch ; while tlie Savage loses it, dying out boloro tne contact or civilisation as surety as eggs are eggs.

Thcofecicaily, \n ork is iclaliveiy objectionable, in spite ot ail our cuuoavoiirs to p'erswue one anotner thai, ic ;s posun'jiy jilcanuiiiuk'. va;easionall,> an appears oileiing a "liver ' lo auyuody wiio will procure tlie advertiser a suitable job, out the advertiser isn't usually i.iieuiig tins lor sheer love of worn, but oui.v in the expectation of getting good wages. Nobody has yet neeu to pay hard cash' lor the privilege, ui shovelling sand while the other iedow looked on and drew the dollars. lint most people arc willing to pay lor 'amusements when they have a Uttlo surplus cash. ! In fact, the civilised man is much like tlie uncivilised m only working for what ha can get out of it. But the uncivilised man has few wants, while tne civilised man has many wants: tue civilised man lias developed a. complicated industrial machine, that carries him along with it, while the uncivilised man has so little industrial mechanism m his primitivevsoeiety that it looks to us as though he had no mechanism whatever. The; savage is really very little removed from the animal, feasting and famishing like the birds of the air and the beasts of the forests, and living in a state <?f .squalor which would make us all feel-very sick if we plunged into it. In the slums of great cities men who ought to be civilised endure most of the disadvantages ol savagerv without; many of the advantages, "though even in the '-slums' there' is not tlie deadly famine which periodically sweeps over the lands ot the uncivilised. ~ , • . , Nansen tells us.,ot the Eskimo whom be met on the East Coast of Greenj., m l —naked indoors and skin-clad out of doors, never washed, covered witii vermin, giving hundredweights ot seal flesh for a needle, and going into hysterics at the gift of a meat-tin. They never worked as Europeans worued: and all along the coast were the skeleton marked "ruins of villages destroyed bv famine. Christmas holidays would have been farcical to then), for they took belidavs whenever they felt like it. which was wlr-m-iyr they had something to eat. Ouv long dead ancestors did not work because "they liked Work, hut because they very much preferred to wrk rather than to become i.ko tlie Eskimo. That is mueh what it is with us to-day. A\ lthout Work there

is only the warmth of the sunshine,;, the shelter of tlie cave; for even tlio J . killing of game and tlie gathering of ! wild truits is working after a fasluon. { V.'o arc warm in all weathers because i of our ceaseless working as stockbreeders and house-bmluers, as weav- ' ers and tanners, as miners and tiriiucrgetters and smiths. We have food hi ' endless variety because of farmers and orchardists and dairymen and butchers and bakers. We tear no famine, tiecause of tlie vast trading army of civilisation, with its merchants and bankers and shipping companies and storekeepers ana sailors and engineers. Our accumulations called " "capital," and our commercial methods draw rice from starving Ufaina to give -sweet puddings to .New Zealand children, wheat irom hungry Russians to teed brawny English artisans, tea from loiu-clotned Indians to be drunk by Auckland girß wnoso very hats would keep an inuiair province m tood lor a year. \Miat we colonials call "poverty"' is incalculable wealth to the great majority ~t the world's inhabitants. All this is through Work, and also because Work is only done tor what we can get out -"- -Our verv holidays are different to the mere, idling of the savage. They are the holidays of a wealthy civilisation, events which are only possible be- .: cause of hard work and its great reward. Steamers and trains, even when crowded, are only possible in a great civilisation, cost hundreds and thousands of pounds to run,' burn costly ;:oal and require highly-paid workmen. The theatres swallow money. Work is objectionable, and wo all know it. But the reward of work, the holiday side of a working civilisation, is the Very reverse of objectionable, and well worth the toil it costs, or ivc shouldn't spend it in that way. We may, of course, work so much that we cannot .enjoy holiday-making; just- as we may idle so much that our muscles become flabby and our powers to work as though they had never been. But there is" a happy mean in all things, and we may comfort curselves with the knowledge that the civilised man averagely works rather too much than too little. For the civilised man has hardly yet realised that the terrible fight for permanent supplies of food and warmth and clothing aro temporarily over as far as he is concerned, that we are so strenuously engaged not in the production of necessities, but in the production of luxuries, and that while a man is wise who digs by candle-light to avoid famine, he is a fool to shorten his life by overwork merely to have a. lace curtain that keeps out the 'sunlight or a new hat that ho could. do without quite well.