CONSTRUCTIVE CITIZENSHIP

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 71, Issue 291, 8 December 1928, Page 13 (Supplement)

CONSTRUCTIVE CITIZENSHIP

Under this title. Professor L. Jacks, Editor of tho Hibbert Journal, has written a book that everybody should read. Jt is an eminently sensible work and one that all should study and lay to heart, who wish well to their country and empire. He does not, as one would actually expect, say anything about a change in tho laws of tho country or a change in the persons governing it. To effect any change for tho better in an industrial age like our own, the improvement must be in tho worker. First there must be an increase of his personal skill; second, there must bo still further changes made in the improvement of methods of co-ordinating labour; and thirdly—and it is upon this ho lays the greatest stress —the spirit of trusteeship must be intensified and made more general. By trusteeship he means the spirit of responsibility. EEvery man, ho says, should be trained to feel (and here tho schools can help a lot) that he must choose some useful work, and, having chosen it, do it as well as his skill enables him. He says that the Labour Unions have missed a great opportunity in not impressing the necessity of this on their members. All their efforts so far have been to secure shorter hours, more pay and better conditions. Nothing has been done by them so far in lhe way of telling their members that it is their duty to earn their wages by doing their job well. This book was given in the form of lectures in 1926-27. Since then there have been the conferences between the Labour Union and the great economists, Sir Alfred Mond and Sir Josiah Stamp. And the T y in which the members of tho Union have backed up those who attended these conferences indicates a growing tendency in the way desired by L. P. Jacks. Tho rank and file are now alive to the fact that there must be a new spirit among the workers as well as among the employers. This is encouraging news. The writer of this article is firmly of the opinion that if all classes of people were imbued with the spirit of trusteeship, that this would help the country far more than anything else. If all would do some work and do it well, whether obliged to or not, the country would bo more prosperous, the cost of living would come down, the things made would be more beautiful and durable, and tho people generally would have more contentment of mind anil self respect. W.T.