“WORK SHYNESS”

Waikato Times, Volume 93, Issue 14490, 13 October 1920, Page 2

“WORK SHYNESS”

ITS CAUSE AND ITS REPfIEDY. “An Old Village Badical'' thus explains in the Daily Mail why the world is becoming “work-shy.” “General Booth’s plain speaking on the subject of llic wave of workshyness that is overspreading all countries is welcome Mini Mutely. . As usiiai the Salvation Army, being closer to Hie people, is quicker to recognise Iho truth than all the dogma-dealers of the Churches. But il is not right to talk, as the General seems to. as if some strange moons) poke madness had changed the blood of the labouring man. There must he a cause for this epidemic, just as t.liare is for iiilluenza nr foot-and-mout.lt disease. Whal Is it? Like everything else, it barks back In the land. lam an old village Radical. I learnt my Radicalism and my trade as a young man on the land. Forty and two years I was a Radical living and labouring at my trade in your great city of London. Now an old man, I am back again close to llic land, and 1 am more a Radical than when I first set, out for London. The cause of what is wrong in the town harks back to the land. And the cause is that the land is not producing llic full crop of workers that il used to produce to supply the towns with. When I came first to London il was full of willing, cheerful workers, and nine out of ten came from the country. But the highest change that lias come in my dime jis that London and all the big towns, instead of being recruited from the villages, are now producing their own populations. And they are not the same quality as the country stuff. How could they be? It is only on the land that from childhood man learns that his life goes hand in hand with his labour. He knows (he meaning of bis work, and its results grow and ripen in bis eyesight. He learns to work hard, hut is cheerful with it. In the towns it is different, for the vast majority. A town-horn lad grows up bo the knowledge of no results ol labour but the week’s wages. There is no satisfaction for a man in such work, and that is why, unless you find a country-bred tradesman, you sec n“ hearty workman with any pride of his trade or pleasure in bis skill, the 'il* lages have been drained dry of good stock. You must free the land and let it grow cottages if you want a willing, industrious population bred. The villages are not producing enough for their own requirements, let alone supplying the needs of the towns for good workers. It all harks hack to the land.”