SOCIAL SECURITY

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLVIII, Issue 21559, 23 January 1940, Page 8

SOCIAL SECURITY

Sir,—ln recent reference to Social Security, the Prime Minister spoke pointedly of the variety of temperament that always has been and still very much is, in opposition to any legislative effort to ameliorate the condition and elevate the status of the so-called “lower classes.” From the casual observer’s standpoint, the antagonism is not readily accounted for, and that any desire should exist to keep fellow beings under the heels of ignorance and poverty is not worthy of questioning. This is based on the logical conclusion reached by all reasonable and thoughtful individuals: That no self-satisfaction is, nor can be, derivable from the knowledge that squalor, poverty, hunger and disease are the afflictions of dozens, even though one may be superabundantly endowed with material impedimenta which clog the functioning of human sympathy and atrophy the better instincts. But the matter may not be so readily dismissed. The evidence of ill has been too pronounced in the past to be discounted in the present and analysis of the bases upon which Mr Savage constructed his references will disclose the Prime Minister’s justification in making them. Opponents of the abolition of slavery were not disposed to arduous and menial toil themselves, but were desirous of cheap labour, and in too many instances manifested racial superiority by behaving like brutes towards their fellow humans. Abolition of child labour opponents were too concerned with mill and mine dividends to be interested in the welfare of children, and those, in the same category, whose opposition to social security and similar provisions against anxiety, indigence and a disappointing ending of honest, useful lives, has evoked the trenchant utterances of Mr Savage. The oncoming substitution of Humanity for bullion is a menace to the old order of quality and an ugly one from a distance.—l am, etc., AD REM. Timaru, January 22.