MAN-MADE SLUMP.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 388, 2 April 1932, Page 26 (Supplement)

MAN-MADE SLUMP.

Stupidity is Cause of T rouble. HOPE FOR THE FUTURE. (Written for the “Star” by E. J. HOWARD, M.P.) Yesterday the children dug up a large white grub in the backyard. It is sandy soil, and they did not kill it, but placed it on the ground and watched what it would do. It dug itself in again and disappeared from sight. That grub had no illusions, apparently. It knew by instinct that its time had not yet arrived when it would develop wings and get its living from the standing timber, mostly the pinus insignis. So it dug itself back into the earth where it was warm and moist and food abounded. In the West Indies I have watched millions of flying fish trying, apparently, to become birds. Just outside of Barbadoes they rise in thousands and just skim the water and drop back again. All day long this goes on, and at night they will fly into a boat if there happens to be a light in the boat. What does it all mean? A struggle for existence? Why the struggle in a world so richly endowed ? Why are there hungry people in New Zealand?

The birds and the beasts can find a living until man comes along and confines them by fences or other means. Our men are unemployed; our women are unemployed. Willing to work; eager to work. They want to produce things. They want to produce food and luxuries. We go on asking these questions. Are there no answers to them? Are we fish wanting to be birds? Are we trying the impossible, or what is the trouble? Some day New Zealand will be feeding, clothing and housing millions more than she is to-day. Greater so-called luxuries will be commonplace in those days. What are we waiting for? The Exodus.

In the late eighties and early nineties we went through a similar experience to the present. Prices dropped. In 1893 they were very low, indeed. The country was filled with unemployed men and women. Hungry men and women sought and begged for the chance to earn by the sweat of their brows sufficient to live on. That’s all they asked; the right to work, the right to live. This writer crossed over to the big continent of Australia because reports said the chances there were greater. Hundreds of others from “ God’s own ” went to Australia. Broken Hill was pouring out metal, and surely there would be a chance there! There was a shipping war on at the time, and so we got over for 30s. The roughness of the conditions can be gauged by a notice that was painted at the foot of one of the gangways: “ Passengers are requested to remove their boots before turning into their bunks” We arrived at Sydney—hungry Sydney, and yet, perhaps, the most kindly city on God’s earth to the hobo, the homeless, the down and apparently outs. One could sleep in the domain, comfortable and warm. A meal could be had for fourpence. Fourpence was not much to pick up for odd jobs. Because of the poverty, too, people were kindlier to one another. The rich looked after the rich, and the poor looked after the poor. We worked passages to Adelaide and walked to Broken Hill. The silver city is in New South Wales, but the track is much easier through South Australia A long journey—360 miles of almost barren country in those days. But around the camp fires at night we talked of New Zealand. We were sure of New Zealand. Whilst we were away there in almost empty country our hearts were in New Zealand. We talked of the depression. We were sure New Zealand would come through first. We didn’t know the meaning of the depression. The why or the wherefore Toll of Industry.

Learned men to-day talk in what they term “ economic jargon ” about the depression of to-day, but they differ so much that unlearned men are con fused and puzzled. We can understand the failure of crops. We can understand the people hungering when there was no corn in Egypt. We can understand -when the locusts sweep down over Africa and eat everything except wire fences. It takes no economic language to explain a shortage under circumstances such as that; but to-day there is no drought, no failure of crops, but an abundance everywhere, and yet men hunger. There up at Broken Hill lie the remains of some of those New Zealanders who went away loving New Zealand. Peace has her victims as well as war. And lead not even manufactured into bullets proved just as deadly to some of our comrades as that fired from a gun. Men were plentiful, and wealth was pouring from those furnaces. Fumes of lead floating around day and night. One could not escape it. But, like smallpox and other diseases, some could tolerate and sw r allow more lead than others. Those who survived were watching New Zealand always with the hope of coming home. When the temperature of, Broken Hill ranged about 100 degrees for weeks, when everything we touched was hot, we thought of the time when we would see our beloved Southern Alps, with their clean snow. During my trip to South Africa a few years ago I met an Armagh Street boy. He said he had learned to love South Africa, but, oh, he had a great longing to see our snowclad mountains, and I thought of Broken Hill.

Away there in New Zealand, too, was a man forging to the front that inspired faith. We had heard of Pember Reeves, and we knew that John Ballance was Prime Minister. But there was a man called Dick Seddon. Not Richard John Seddon, but Dick to those men so far away from home. Dick at that time was Minister of Public Works and Mines. But we knew he would get his chance and New Zealand would come through. And so Richard John Seddon, the hope of the outcasts of those days, came and brought us rushing back again to Maoriland. A Matter of Cycles. History seems to repeat itself. Everything in this old world goes in cycles. Even the universe itself is a matter of cycles. Millions of worlds, millions of suns, turning, turning, turning. Ever on the turn and ever cornin' back. If the almanac did not record, by numbers the passing of one revolution to another, what difference would there be between yesterday and to-day? So history appears to repeat itself because of this old merry-go-round, we call a world, turning around and around in the same old way year in and year out.

What makes the fish try to fly? Fear? Instinct? Call it what we like; millions of unborn fish will grow wings and try to fly just the same as their forefathers tried to fly. For some unexplainable reason the whole of the Australian States got men like Richard John Seddon about the same time. In South Australia Charles Cameron Kingston came into power; a man who damned economic theories, who argued that men wanted to work. He was the first to propose an I.C. and A. Act to prevent sweating. Before he was Prime Minister, he published in “ Stead’s Review ” an outline of the proposed Act. The New Zealand Act was almost a copy. So these men, differently trained, saw the only way out was for men to be given the chance to provide their own needs. The “ Seven Devils.”

In New Zealand Seddon was moving in a like way, only faster. Seddon could not be bothered with economic theories. Put the men to work and let them produce things. So he introduced factory laws and arbitration laws and lien Acts and State advances. And the trained economists of his day said: “It’s the seven devils of Socialism let loose.” Bfit it worked. Men from all over the world turned earnest eyes to New Zealand. It worked, and New Zealand began to get her place in the sun. It worked, and from Africa and Egypt and Australia her boys came back to her. It worked, and for years New Zealand went ahead.

Then came the change. Dick Seddon died, and his opponents came into power again. And back New Zealand slipped, and slipped and slipped, until to-day she cannot produce from her own lands economically: To-day we are hung up on economic theories waiting for butterfat to rise in price. Today we are afraid of ourselves. And so history appears to repeat itself. And we speak of economic laws as if they were fixed laws like the atom. So many electrons and so many protons around something we term a nucleus. But it is not so. Economic laws so called are man-made laws. They are not fixed laws. The present slump is a man-made slump. Man’s stupidity and greed have produced the trouble. It is man’s stupidity that has caused New Zealand’s troubles. They can be c.ured and will be cured when our New Zealand men take as much interest in New Zealand’s affairs as they take in sport of all descriptions. When we are ready the slump will disappear like mist before the morning sun.