The New Zealand Graphic AND LADIES’ JOURNAL. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 1890.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume VI, Issue 38, 20 September 1890, Page 10

The New Zealand Graphic AND LADIES’ JOURNAL. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 1890.

Persons who do not reflect upon the inequalities or inconsistencies of life, and who do not know of the course human affairs have taken during the last century, keep asking plaintively, ‘ What is the use of all these strikes?’ < Ithers who are suffering in purse, or even in person, write to the papers vociferating and imputing to the workingman depths of malice and a desire of plundering the wealthy. Even the sacrifices which he has made are derided, and the distress of his own family thrown in his face in order to shake his determination. Those who have learnt how in the past every widely-ex-tended movement of thehuman mind has ultimately resulted in a greater balance of good than of evil to human society, accept the combination and the self-sacrifice of the working man as an earnest of better things. The mere fact that the ‘ masses ’ (so-called) of mankind are becoming actuated by a feeling of sympathy, and are co-operating to secure a certain object in the most peaceable manner short of actual rebellion, shows a progress upon themethods of our ancestors, in whose day every serious difference was settled by an appeal to arms. It is simply an attempt to show the minority of society, who have hitherto arrogated to themselves the right of governing through their wealth, that they are not masters of the situation in society, but partners—associates. It is the logical consequence of the economical doctrine that labour is wealth, not gold. Formerly gold could buy everything -even the draff and offal of mankind to crush, as mercenaries, the rising aspirations of the educated and far-seeing few. This is exactly the stage in which the Russian people are at present living. Educate the people there, ami the army crumbles in the hand of the Czar and his bureaucrats like a rope of sand. With education-conies reflection and the inevitable question, *ls this just?’ Therefore all the efforts of the less extreme Nihilists are directed to letting light into the torpid minds of a people content to exist as the beasts exist. The well-proved maxim of tyranny has ever been ‘ divide and govern.’ Foster * individualism,' as it is called, or competition. Set men by the ears if you can, persuade them that they will get more out of your system of scramble—for everybody likes to be flattered by the suggestion that he alone has the qualities for succeeding than they will out of <me of mutual assistance, and then by gewgaws and titles attach to your service the prize-winners in the lottery of life. <>n the, passions of selfishness and vanity has the old system of individualism been founded and maintained. And this individualism was not confined to persons. It was the actuating spirit of whole communities, the members of each of which had sense enough to hang together for the objects to which they had become accustomed, but could not see that in desisting from senselessly quarrelling with their neighbours, tin* happiness of life must be infinitely increased. So in the dark ages of Europe and of other continents, tribe has warn'd with tribe, prince with prince, town with town, and emperors and monarchs with one another in the effort to swallow up and dominate each other. In every case appeal was to the so-called patriotic instincts of tin* people, which was only a wider form of individual selfishness.

Now, however, a world wide feeling is growing up that we human beings will gain more in our struggle against nature by combining to help each other than by cutting

each other’s throats politically or by holding aloof from one another in civil life. * Strikes ’ are the death-knell of isolation. We congratulate ourselves that we are civilized because we do not, like the savage, massacre or enslave the stranger, but we shut ourselves up in our houses with the utmost indifference to the welfare of our next door neighbours, or to the lot of the wanderer who may be dying of hunger and exposure upon our doorstep. It is merely pastime savagery. The day is coming when family will not be allowed to isolate itself from family, and that curious paradoxical condition of things in towns, where the closer people are wedged together the less knowledge and interest they take in each other, will cease. Out of the present agitations, which so far are meekness and mildness themselves compared with the bloodshed and suffering attendant upon great move, inents of the human race in previous ages, will insensibly arise institutions, strange indeed to our eyes, but the absence of which in this our day will appear lamentable and incomprehensible to those who grow to maturity under the newer and more beneficent regime.

We do not envy the feelings with which the civil servant with an overcharged quiver of olive branches takes up his daily paper nowadays. The news of a Euiopean battle slaying its tens of thousands, or of a Hood obliterating the population of a Chinese province of which nobody we know ever heard of, excites, of course, a gentle thrill of horror at the breakfast table ; but when paterfamilias retails between his gasps the bewildering announcement that Parliament has brought his salary under the pruning-knife, then we see what genuine emotion can be produced by causes quite unimportant to the world at large. What a vista of small and innocent delights vanish from out of the perspective of the future in the minds of the girls, and what acloud of impending cares rises menacingly before the path of the careful housewife! Much as we may jest upon the subject of retrenchment, the measures which the legislature feels bound to enact often carry with them many of the elements of real tragedy, and affect the destiny of scores of young lives trembling upon the verge of necessity. How the consternation produced by the news ‘ that they must now do something for themselves ’ gives the lie to that cant regarding the dignity of labour. People delicately reared shrink from ordinary labour, more because it is disgraceful in the eyes of everybody and leisure is the public idol, than because labour itself is hard. Labour with honour is courted, and those that have it are generally loath to lay it down.

‘ Sweet are the uses of adversity.’ Hence it is to be expected that the gentlemen of the kid-gloved fraternity or the athlete who has prostituted his strength in the cause of manual toil w ill not think any the less highly of himself because he has en joyed a short, sharp sensation of downright honest labour. Posing e/i nmatcur is after all one of the excitements of life, and one which our jcnncsse dorce have been enjoying of late while masquerading « la lumper upon the water front. 1 Ah, Cholly, old chappie, is it awful heavy ?’ says Mercutio to Romeo, as the latter staggers over thegangway withavery under-sized pipkin of rotten potatoes. ‘ Well played, well played, Crusher !’ shout an admiring crowd as the celebrated ‘forward’ reels out under the weight of a towering sack of grain, and easts it headlong at the feet of his confreres. Meanwhile the darling vocalist of fashionable society and a dashing lawyer are with objurgations endeavouring to run a reluctant porker ‘ forrards ’ to the animal pen, executing in the attempt quite a rattling vocal trio of the ultra operatic school. ‘ Aftei work's fitful fever may they sleep well,'and on arising remember the healing virtues of St. Jacobs Oil, Warner’s Safe Cure, and the other multitudinous specifics for the strains, barks, ami bruises which their outing has entailed.

On degree day at Canterbury College Professor Cook, in discharging the functions of the absent Chancellor of the V Diversity, gave a most interesting and attractively-ex-pressed review of the progress of the higher education in New Zealand. There is probably no member of the University stall better fitted by his early experience to express an opinion upon the tendency of education respectively in New Zealand, Australia, and the British Isles than Professor Cook, and the result of the exposition was, as judged by the rigid evidence of statistics, sufficient to make us

supremely content with the efficacy of the system we have adopted. It is really surprising to find that in a country with a population smaller by two-tiftbs than either Victoria or New South Wales, the number of graduates in arts admitted during last year was only three less than at Sydney University, and four more than at Melbourne ; and this, as Professor Cook expressly states, augurs no slip-shod facility of admission in the New Zealand curriculum, but rather, if anything, a greater zeal for overcoming the difficulties of a slightly more stringent system of examination than that pursued at the Australian I Diversities.

This thirst for mental culture is,as Professor Cook suggests, no doubt due, in a measure, to the centres of intellectual light being more generally diffused here in proportion to our population ; but it may and probably does gain strength from the greater absence of social pressure ami that greed of gain, which the concentration of population at a few points indubitably excites in the United States and Australia. Wherever the commercial spirit is strongest there matters intellectual, or at least pursuits scholastic, seem to languish somewhat. Even art and music lose a great part of their dilettante character, and are followed in the fierce spirit of business enterprise. The arts course is neglected for that of the professions, and the question ‘ what pays best?’ is the deciding factor in the calculations of the city youth at the outset of his University career. Even the figures of matriculation lists in this country indicate lightly the same tendency in the more commercial towns to underrate pure intellectual culture ; for Canterbury—a pastoral and agricultural community with a markedly landed class — exhibits more partiality for Cniversity studies than her sister provinces of Auckland and Otago.