“CUBES” THAT KILL

Thames Star, Volume LVII, Issue 16212, 29 September 1924, Page 2

“CUBES” THAT KILL

DANGER TO COMMUNITY. Changes arising from the order of war and its after effects caused an oppressive sense of unsettlement, with eagerness to find a cure, says a Quarterly Review article on “Ideals in Politics.” Many people thought that the best method was to be bold to the verge of recklessness. Economic laws were set at defiance, and arbitrary rules were established to regulate labour and to fetter capital. Hazardous and meddlesome experiments produced ever-increasing Diction in regard to finance, manufactures, and employment. Wages grew by leaps and. bounds, only to lead to increased pressure of poverty, increased unemployment, and increased depression of trade. In any worthy political faith there must be two elements of primary importance —an ideal and a discipline of the Duty of Responsibility are now in danger, and should be restored to their rightful

authority. \ PETTY AND [HARASSING RESTRICTIONS. It is sound politics and sound molality to safeguard the free play of voluntary effort. It is one thing to protect the weak and defenceless against cruel conditions; it is quite another thing to prescribe |o the grown man the limits of his labour, and to fence him in with petty and harassing regulations, to bind him hand and foot to some tyrannical organisation, and to force him to lead his life within the grooves of a cramping system that his thrift, industry, and ability are a menace to the idleness and incompetency of his fellows, and ought, therefore, to be penalised. The cowardly acceptance of economic -theories which are often 1 merely the product of selfish class animosity seems to have dulled our perception of the extent to which this creeping paralysis of restrictive regulations, however imposed, has affected the body politic.

Few people, continues the Quarterly, would hesitate to declare themselves on the side of Liberty in the abstract, but these same people, misled.iby specious political quackery* may suffer themselves to glide far down the slope of socialism without perceiving how much of their liberty has been filched away. Theorists are increasingly active. The political fanatic is always easily persuaded that his dreams, must become trufe, and that they will lead him to heavenly beatitude. During the war, too,

the political perception of people generally become woefully blunted, and types' of Restrictive legislation; were permitted which even the exigencies of the situation did not always justify. One precedent led to another, and tempted condonement of what would have moved indignation at a normal time. By Government concessions to socialistic tendencies there has, been a reckless interference with private effort, and an insane invasion of the sacrednesfj of Contact on which all commercial machinery must turn. SKILFUL WORKMEN FETTERED. By its fetters upon freedom of contract, and by its interference with private enterprise, socialism in England has worked evil in the problem of housing provision. Astutely, It has also used trade unions as its tools. With their help, says the Quarterly, it has tied the hands and stunted the efforts of the individual workman. He must not lay more than a fixed number of bricks. He must not add to his own earnings and increase the output by working more than the allotted number of hours. He must not do a stroke of work which differs in the minutest detail from that work which his trade union assigns to him as his daily task. He must not accept as a comrade anyone who has acquired the necessary skill under conditions different from those prescribed by the trade union. Apprenticeship is no longer an open school where technical skill may be learned. It is only an artificial barrier by which the number of new entrants imay be arbitrarily chefcked. And these are the conditions under which the free citizen is controlled by a beneficent democracy! Strikes are another menace. They have become a form of deliberate blackmail on the public. There is a grave danger of mob law, not only for the lation, but in the trade unions themselves.

PROLONGING CHILDHOOD. Zeal and enthusiasm do not run well in harness with compulsion. Instances are given by the Quarterly from educational developments. “Advanced” educational reformers attach great importance to the assiduous eli-, urination of any voluntary element or any liberty of! action in those for whose assumed benefit their schemes are propounded. It is one of their primary aims to drive from the educational ‘ field all voluntary agencies, and to substitute a universal system of publicly regulated and publicly supported schools. In England it has been proposed to compel young men and women up to 18 years of age to avail themselves of educational opportunities which many of them — and those not perhaps the most wanting in intellectual equipment—would

find insufferably tedious and unsuited to their station and prospects in

Examples could be multiplied of the same tendency, both in education and in other departments of life If permitted full sway, says the article, they will drain out of national life all freedom and spontaneity From many directions there are creeping influences that may undermine all that is most valuable in national instincts. Others than members or adherents of the Labour Party often show themselves ready to abandon the principle of liberty and voluntary effort, and to vie with their socialistic opponents in schemes of compulsory State action. It is only natural, for instance, that we should all be attracted by proposals which may alleviate the condition of the sick and thef afflicted. But it does not follow that we ought to undermine the operations of voluntary charity, with its attendant blessings, land substitute compulsion and bureaucratic agency. We do not wish to see our hospitals State institutions. It is right, adds the Quarterly, to do all that we can to encourage the employment of ex-service men, but it is unsound economics and mistaken kindness to attempt to enforce that employment by compulsory methods.

SPOON-FEEDING BREEDS WEAKLINGS.

Some unconscious socialists gratify a self-complacent benevolence by giving their adherence to proposals of which they fail to perceive the full tendency. It is right to do all we can for the social benefit of every class, and to throw open, so far as possible, equality of opportunity. v But, urges the Quarterly, let us not indulge in vain dreams that we give the best opportunity by thrusting upon all a* mental dietary which they are not able to assimilate, and by forgetting that the most valuable part of our educative processes is the stimulation of individual effort. We used to adopt the familiar and not inapt metaphor of the ladder, upon the lower rung of which we were to place the feet of the aspirant, exhorting him to use his own efforts to climb to the top while we guarded against any thwarting interruptions. That metaphor is now despised. We are told instead that we must make the ladder unnecessary, and substitute, for it a moving staircase that will carry us upwards automatically. If we steal away from our youth, in the capricious mood of a thoughtless generosity tihe stimulus to self-exertion, we drain from his vital stock of energy a quality which no efforts of ours can ever replace. A spoon-fed generation is not only a curse to a nation; it is a cure to itself. And those who make of education a fetish to be blindly worshipped, a dose to be administered to all and sundry, and not a treasure to be bravely toiled for by the wmrthy are creating such a generation.