CAPITAL AND LABOUR

Waikato Times, Volume 107, Issue 17997, 16 April 1930, Page 7

CAPITAL AND LABOUR

(To the Editor.)

Sir, —Can our Labour friends inform tts why two books bavins a direct bearing on the above and written in a thoughtful and sane way some thirtyfive years ago are unobtainable, apparently 'having gone out of print? One was" called “Merrie England,” by Robert Blaehford, and the other “Looking : Backward,” by Bellamy. There was a sequel elaborating the latter, called “Equality.” “Blaehford is still alive, now an aged but virile, cultured and graceful writer. He founded and is still the editor of the labour “Clarion,” which numbers amongst its correspondents several educated, practical and thoughtful writers. Originally a soldier of the line but with literary tendencies, he grew disgusted with the futility of war and tho unsatisfactory position of labouring conditions, and educated him#self into journalism. But it was Bellamy’s book that created the greatest interest at the time. Written in the socratio manner it covered tho whole ground of life’s journey: each question that sprang to one’s lips bein ganswered with quiet, cultured lucidity. After a lifetime’s experience of work and wa&es I can see only one, apparently hopeless, stumbling block to the realisation of his dream, in the place that money holds in our invalued civilisation. Do not misunderstand me, the methods outlined were poles apart from that i fungus growth on the evolution of sane socialism—Russian communism. Bellamy was a highly cultured man with a university education, but with a very humane and all-encompassing mind. He is dead; are we to take it that his sane evolutionary methods were too slow for the militant Labour leaders of these later years; or have they assimilated his teachings and using much of what he outlined, without even a “thank ’ee."? Students of history and experience of life know’ that all too often the individual who is ahead of his time is soonest forgotten, and not infrequently the opportunist gets all the kudos. Last winter some of us listened, and not without some irritalion, to a so-called debate between a local academic economist and a visionary literary, man, on Capital and Labour. As a debate it w’as a poor exposition. No doubt the active organiser and some members of the W.E.A. have heard of Bellamy’s thought-compelling hooks, will get copies of them if possible, and give us a lecture worth listening to. The'suh-

Ject is one that abbots us,alt at all times, whether in the cradle or in the sere and yellow. But perhaps the world is so full of a number of things that minister to our transitory pleasures nowadays we have neither the time nor the inclination to think upon the serious side of life! A still small voice here intervenes to whisper in my ear: has Australia awakened to a tardy realisation of this?—l am, etc., ONLOOKER.