MAN DOES NOT SHARE UP FOOD.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18644, 22 December 1928, Page 1

MAN DOES NOT SHARE UP FOOD.

AN ECONOMIC PROBLEM YET TO BE SOLVED.

Written for the “ Star ** by x E. .T. Howard, M.P. “I hear thee speak of a bit o’ land And a cow for every labouring hand: Tell me. dear mother, where is that shore. Where I shall find it and work no more?”—Anon.

There is some argument as to whether the 25th of December is the real date of the birth of Christ, but whether the date is right or not does not matter a great deal. The fact that •we do keep up one day in the year to celebrate the birth of the “Child" is what matters.

The Christmas Spirit. Psychologically, as one professor would say, it is a good institution. If one watches closely during the coming few days we shall see hard-headed, and supposedly hard-hearted, business men, bankers, shipping men, and even politicians, sneaking into the toy shops to buy something for a child. We all want to “give,” at this time of the year, although in a fortnight’s time we shall all drop back into the old groove and sec how much we can get rather than give. There is another point about the Christmas season, and that is that at least throughout the British people it is a time of stocktaking. We read in our cables that the Russians have forbidden the keeping of the Christmas festival. We must remember that the Russian calendar is quite a different set of dates to ours. Calendars and dates arc a matter of geography. Those of us who are lucky enough to own a decent radio set, know that we can tune in America on Sunday here and listen to our cousins jazzing in America on Saturday evening. Rut if the Russians have decided to abolish the festival of Christmas then they have done a silly thing.

Years of Progress. The spirit of Christmas is the Peter Pan spirit and probably adds years to life on account of the forgetting of self and the fostering of the spirit of giving. There is another thing about the Christmas season that is good and that is the fact that it is a kind of milestone that helps us to mark the passage of time and progress. We pause and think how far we have come on the journey and for a moment, look ahead. There is a tinge of regret that the first four ships that came to Port Cooper had not taken at least another ten days. Everyone is so busy about December 16, that we haven’t the time to pause and take stock. If the anniversary day was a little nearer Christmas we could have taken the two together. East Sunday when our Pioneers were commemorating their arrival in this country. Sir Charles Statham with other great men from amongst us was laying a foundation stone in connection with Christ’s College. The ceremony was broadcasted, and thousands of people from all over this country were listening to the speeches and the singing. The writer had the pleasure of hearing it being received on a fairly decent machine. And the real fun of the thing was that the man at the studio had switched over to the microphone before the heads were ready to commence the ceremony. Wild horses would not draw from me all that we heard, but it was interesting. But the main thing about the ceremony was the fact that in one building we had the very people who came ashore from what we term the first four ships, the people who climbed ovc' the hills, the people who saw these plains in tussock and wild growth before there was a timnel or a Lake Coleridge power station or telephones or telegraphs. Modern Marvels. The tremendous progress that we have made since those people landed, borders on the ivyrrvellous. That evening a laddie of seventeen summers invited a few friends to what he termed his “ shanty ” to see and hear a few things. In a kind of haphazard way he fingered around a knob or two and we heard a man's voice, and that “ kid ” said, “ The Russian. But he talks too much," he added, and began twiddling around for Japan. We couldn't hear Japan because he said some “ blighter ” had a “ blue ray ” machine going somewhere. curing someone's corns. We heard voices from other countries and in a matter of fact voice that “ laddie ” would just j say where it was coming from and that was that. lie couldn’t visualise the days when there were no telephones. He couldn’t put himself back to the days when we considered the telephone was the last word in marvels. He told us that soon he would have a television machine set up and we would be able to see our friends on the mail boat coming from Great Britain. And the minds of the older people flew back to the days when our parents left the Old Land for the new; when they were practically lost to all ashore for months and months. And we began to think of the wonderful progress we have made during the lifetime of our pioneers who are yet with us. Man is a wonderful animal in manv ways. lie has made a machine with which he can fly through the air quicker than the birds. He has made a machine in which he can go down under the deep waters. lie can travel across the earth on wheels almost as quickly as light, and yet apparently he falls short in some respects. The Professor’s Idea. At a W.E.A. suir,mer school one year there were two professors. One was a master of what is termed the science of economics; the other was a master of the science of psychology. Between these two experts there was a certain amount of rivalry as to which of the two sciences was the most useful. After the economic professor had delivered his lecture the psychologist came on and said. " Share up the food and let's get on with the work!” That was his idea of economics, that it was simply sharing up the food. And it is in the sharing up of the food where ■' man the master ” seems to fail. Although he has conquered the air and the sea; although he has invented a machine for carrying a whisper around the world, he has made a failure of the sharing up of the food. So we see his inventive genius displayed before our ej'es with his “movie pictures.” his small box that will bring in music from the other side of the earth. Although we see his machines flying through the air and his ships so large that one of them could carry the first four ships that came here a few short years ago, yet he has failed to serve out the food in such a way that his comrades can get on with the work. Man will yet conquer poverty. In every human being there is a desire to do things. An unemployed human being is simply a disease. Either the unemployed human is sick or the society that surrounds him is sick. The difference between ease and disease is very small. When we recognise poverty as a disease we shall set out to study it. not to poultice it, but to cure it. If we could share out the food, we could get on with the work, and then even-one could enjoy a Merry Christmas.