A CURE FOR CLASS CONFLICT IN DEMOCRATISED INDUSTRY.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 185, 6 August 1931, Page 8

A CURE FOR CLASS CONFLICT IN DEMOCRATISED INDUSTRY.

To-day’s Signed Article

Should open the Door of Manual Labour to the Brawn of the Rich.

By

J. A. R. Cairns.

(Famous English ex-Magistcate).

The Citizen Army 1914-1919 was more than a great fighting machine; it was a revelation in social contentment, individual loyalty and national camaraderie. In the ranks public school and university men, doctors, lawyers s *nd clergymen were to be found and byre-men and tram-conductors were captains and colonels.

The one felt no humiliation or disgrace, the other no unholy elation. And when peace came, each went back to the day’s work.

w® HAD a democratised army because i there was need of it. Those were strange, stern days, and attention was focused on bigger things than class distinctions or conventions. In 1914 the Great War obscured, if it did not altogether destroy, the spirit of the class war. Can a solvent be found for the class conflict and confusion of to-day as potent as was war in 1914? I am sure it can ; democratised industry. There was no loss of dignity and prestige in enlisting as a private in the infantry in 1914; on the contrary, it was a proud and patriotic thing. So is it, and so should it be in industry to-day. We all mouth the commonplace that all work is honourable, that no disgrace attaches to homely toil, but few act as if they really believed it. It is true, nevertheless. In our efforts to satisfy the desires of the “ lower classes” for learning and culture we offer them opportunities to enter publicschools, universities and the professions, and many avail themselves of the chances. The Thing Lacking. I have an interesting record of back-street lads who have won world-wide fame in the arts, sciences, literature, law and public life And none of these are ashamed either of their ancestry or the place of their nativity. All this is to the good. The brains of the masses can push upwards to regions of scholarship and learning. What is lacking is a corresponding avenue by which the brawn of the “ upper classes ” can work back to the manual and the mechanical. If Millwall recruits the medical profession, why should Mayfair not recruit the dockers? If East End brain pushes up, why should West End brawn not push down? I know quite a number of public school boys who are set on the colonies. They have no liking for learning and no taste for the professions. Lost fortunes, in some cases, preclude them from a career of loafing. The higher reaches of commerce are closed to them, but they cannot “ lower ” themselves to take a job on the railway or in > the mine or engineering shop. I wonder why. “If a strike were on, it would be different,” they tell me. I wonder why. Hi EE H 3 HI @ S 3 (U ® ®IS ® EH® HI ®EE!® H 3 S 3 @® ®

Comrades All. Every year the public schools turn out their thousands of youths predestined by nature, in taste and texture, for muscular and mechanical work, and not a few of them are failures from the start through lack of opportunity. Snobbery blocks the way. Some are hidden in family businesses and others are periodically sent to this colony or that. Some end where they ought to have begun, on the lowest rung of unskilled labour. Yet these last are the only contribution that the public schools make, and they are derelicts who have fallen from their high estate by drink or crime. The advantages of democratised industry will be immense and immediate. Thousands of restless and misplaced youths wiil find the work that is adapted to their nature and equipment, and the gilded loafer will be transformed into a manual worker. - No Disgrace. There will be no necessary discontent because there will be no disgrace. It is snobbery and the class distinction that make manual work less honourable and less honoured than the professional and clerical. But the chief advantage will be found in the social gain of mutual understanding between the various strata of society. Camaraderie of the classes would be a definite result. Strikes, and the causes that produce strikes, would be eliminated; a general strike would become an impossibility. Nor would there be much regret if occasionally the younger sons of peers went back to the conditions and environments in which not a few of their progenitors began the careers that ended in honours and fortune. Inter-marrying would be a matter of course, perhaps to the betterment of the At all events, labour would be raised in dignity and honour, social cleavages would be lessened, and the only Communism that has health and sanity would ensue—the communism of a common race with common traditions and a great destiny. We have opened the door to the brains of the poor; let us open the other door to the brawn of .the rich. (Anglo-American N.S.—Copyright.)