The Good Old Times.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXIX, Issue 16, 19 October 1907, Page 56

The Good Old Times.

BY ANDREW CARNEGIE. The problem of our age is the proper administration of wealth, that the ties of brotherhood may still bind together the rich and poor in harmonious relationship. The conditions of human life have not only been changed but revolutionised within the past few hundred years. In former clays there was little difference between the dwelling, dress, food and environment of the chief and those of his retainers. The Indians are to-day where civilized man was. When visiting the Sioux I was led to the wigwam of the chief. It was like the others in external appearance, and even within the difference was trifling between it and those of the pooorest of his braves. The contrast between the palace of the millionaire and the cottage of the labourer with us to-day measures the change which has come with civilization, and is not to lie deplored, but welcomed as highly beneficial. It is as well, nay, essential, for the progress of the race that the houses of some should be homes for all that is highest and best in literature and the arts, and for all the refinements of civilisation. Without wealth there can be no Macenas. The “good old times” were not good old times. Neither master nor servant was as well situated then as to-day. A relapse to old conditions would be disastrous to both —not the least so to him who serves—and would sweep away civilization with it. But whether the change is for good or for evil, it is upon us, beyond our power to alter, and therefore to be accepted and made the best of. It is a waste of time to criticise the inevitable. It is easy to see how the change has come. One illustration will serve for almost every phase of the cause. In the manufacture of products we have the whole story. It applies to all combinations of human industry, as stimulated and enlarged by the inventions of this scientific age. Formerly articles were manufactured at the domestic hearth, or in small shops which formed part of the household.

The master and his apprentices worked side by side, the latter living with the master, and, therfore, subjects to the same conditions.

When these apprentices rose to be masters there was little or no change in their mode of life, and they, in turn, educated succeeding apprentices in the same routine. There was, substantiallysoeial equality, ami even political equality, for those engaged in industrial pursuits had little or no voice in the State. The inevitable result of such a mode of manufacture was crude articles at high prices. To-day the world obtains commodities of excellent qualities at prices which even the preceding generation would have deemed incredible. In the commercial world similar causes have produced similar .esults, and the race is lienefited thereby.. The poor enjoy what the rich could not before afford. What were the luxuries have become the necessaries of life. The labourer has now more comforts than the farmer had a few generations ago. The farmer has more luxuries than the landlord had, and is more richly clad and better housed. The landlord has books and pictures rarer, and appointments more artistic than the king could then obtain. The price we pay for this salutary change is, of course, great. We assemble in the factory and in the mine thousands of operators of whom the employer can know nothing, and to whom the employer is little better than a my th, AH intercourse between them is at an end. Rigid castes are formed, and, as usual, mutual ignorance breeds mutual distrust. Each caste is without sympathy for the other, and ready to credit anything disparaging in regard to it. Under the law of competition the employer of thousands is forced into the strictest economies, among whom the wages paid to labour figure prominently, and often there is friction between the employer and the employee, between capital and labour, between rich and poor. Human society has lost homogeneity.