WORLD UNDERGOES MANY CHANGES.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18780, 8 June 1929, Page 1

WORLD UNDERGOES MANY CHANGES.

IS PRESENT PROGRESS OF REAL BENEFIT? 1 , (Written for the “ Star ” bv E. J. Howard, M.P.). Some few years ago there was a controversy in an American magazine as to v. nether what is termed progress wasn’t only a useful illusion. Both sides of the argument were well sustained and ■were most interesting. To the person ■who thinks at all there must co*ne times when one asks himself the same question. But then comes the counterquestion—what is progress? The world to-day is undergoing a tremendous change in thought and outJook. 'Ve are becoming a world on wneels. Of course some of my close critics will argue that the world isn’t altering and that it is only the people. U ed, the people to me are the world, i hat is to say, the unborn millions, the poets, the doctors, the artists, the soldiers. the sailors and even the politicians of the future are to-day in the world somewhere, in some form, just biding tneir time. Some argue that human nature never alters. That, of course, only throws us back to the question cf ■what is human nature. Those who can remember, say. forty years ago and compare it with to-day must realise that even the faces of the people are beginning to alter. Try to pick out in the street the people who drive motorcars. There is certainly a motor-car face coming into being. Just as one can pick a sailor. So presently we shall begin to see the difference between those who drive and those ■who do not. The Merry-go-Round. The late Professor Bickerton used to tell us that the earth in its progress around the sun also had another movement which he compared with what the boys term in a top the digging of its grave. First, there was the sun’s movement: a movement in which he took all his family, the planets, with' him. Then these planets had their own families around them called moons. The suns family whirls around him and completes the circle in, I think, somewhere about 40.000.000 years. Our part of the family which we call the earth cO distinguish it from Mercury, Venus Mars, Jupiter. Saturn and so on also has its own independent spinning movement, which gives us night and day and then the further movement referred to above. There is no top and bottom to space, but in our procession around the ?un the ice caps grow until they become heavier at one end than the other, a»d finally we tilt right over. So the Professor, in a half-humorous way, used to tell us that we were on a merry-go-round and that if we were allowed to stop on long enough we should arrive at tne place we started off from. When Scott went to the South someone asked just what he was looking for. And it may be asked even now, just what is the Byrd expedition down amongst the ice for The answer we know is scientific investigation. If coal is found there it will be safe to say that that part at one time was what we term tropical and that will to a certain extent answer the question as to whether life, after all, is but a series of repetitions, as our Professor used to put it, the merry-go-round beginning and ending in the same place. We are only permitted to enjoy, or otherwise, our brief spin to the extent of. comparatively speaking, a moment of time. Some old philisopher wrote that man s time was three score years and ten, so we all make up our mind We must die at that age, and taking her full and by we do die about that time. Some, of course, who eat anything, and enjoy life live longer. Others diet on a - strict scale and it seems longer to them. Of course, had old philosopher said that man’s allotted span «- was six score years and ten, then, of r course, man would have remained longer on the so-called merry-go-round i- and perhaps have learnt more of its - mysteries. Seventy years out of L 40,000,000 is but a tick of the clock. So in trying to find out if wc- are making progress how can we measu e and what *- standards do we use? t- Kaffirs’ Life. V When I saw those fine, happy-go-lucky children of the sun that we - affectionately term Kaffirs; when I Z~ saw their fine physique; when I realis- _ **d that millions of these people lived _ and died without hearing the sound of ~ the factory whistle to hustle them to - work; that they laughed and loved , without knowing what it meant to have _ to register as unemployed at the Labour Department, I wondered if our boasted i progress was really progress. The __ white man went to the South Sea L- Islands and found something thev - termed the Pearl of the Pacific and so J. 9 n - All the names of the precious - jewels were used to describe these ~ islands. He even compared them with ~ Paradise. ~ What was there in these islands that „ caused these white people to use this _ language? They were not beautiful * compared with, say, our Southern Alps, - instance. They consisted mostly of Z little knobs sticking up out of the sea, and the coral insects had graduallv built barrier or protective reefs around _ them. But where is their beauty? True, the island we named Rarotonga is a thing of beauty to see rising out of the night when the sun comes up That is a volcanic island, and the reds and the purple tints left from the fire and the various shades of green and yellow in its vegetation give this island the appearance of an opal with the changing lights. There are nine islands in that group, and Rarotonga is the only one that can be classed as beauti ful. . Mangaia, from a geological point of view, is interesting, but not beautiful. Altering Samoa. Samoa is, to a certain extent, L»eautiful- Again, this is a volcanic island or islands. And the fires of the days when these islands were just vents for the cooling crust of the earth have left all the pretty colours that one can see in the cooling of the slags from anv furnace. Certainly the Xorth Island of New Zealand contains the same thing in prettier settings. But it was not land or the trees that made the whites christen these islands with names of the gems. It was the fact that on these favoured spots man could live and love and ■ enjoy life. But we whites said: “This won’t do. We have a mission. It is not on town-planning lines. They can’t be happy; they only think they are happy.” So Tamasese was ordered to shift a growing fence back ten yards. Tamasese laughed and stuck a red flower behind his ear. But that was no good to us. We had decided that the house must stand square to a square line that we had drawn on paper. This great big child of the sun said: “ Don't be silk/; have some kava.” “But, but, but Auckland isn’t built this way. You must build like Auckland.” So Tamasese got six months in Auckland gaol to show him how Auckland was built. In Samoa all the Samoans shared the fruits and food. There were no hungry children because it seems so silly to the Samoans that children should be hungry when there was so plentiful a , supply. Machines Replace Workers. But the wonderful white man has invented a shoe making machine that will put 100.000 factory hands out of work, ; says an American paper. One girl, savs this same paper proudly—one girl offer- , •ting six rib-cutting machines does as

much work in a clothing factory to-day as twenty-five used to do. The other twenty-four are unemployed. One girl takes care of more cotton looms than fifty could manage formerly. 'One girl with a wrapping machine now takes the place of 100. A shoe-lasting machine now does the work of eight men. A window glass machine does the work of twenty. A bottle-making machine does the work of fifty-four. In pig-iron casting one man has replaced eight With the use of the electric magnetone man can do the work of 12S. Some 50,000 harvesting machines have displaced 100:000 farm labourers. In manufacturing businesses, says this American paper, fifteen men out of every 100 were put off because of improved machinery in -four years. And we call it “ progress.” The men and women displaced are unemployed, living in poverty, and we are staggered to know what to do with them. Which brings us back to the original question, viz., ,l Is progress a useful illusion?”