CANDID COMMENTS.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLI, Issue 19, 4 November 1908, Page 8

CANDID COMMENTS.

I am not by way of being a Socialist, but when I read on one sheet of my London paper that the unemployed problem has never been more acute or further off a satisfactory solution than at the present moment, and then turn to another and see the printed records of insensate extravagance on the part of the monied classes —then I do begin to feel that something-quite drastic should be done to improve existing and unequal social conditions. The wealthy are so disgracefully prodigal in their expenditure when it happens to appeal to their special turn of mind. Women and children are starving now in Britain, and will starve throughout the coming winter, because there is, for a variety of contributing causes, not sufficient work to keep all the would-be workers in full-time employment—yet we hear of the disgusting lavishness of the society woman towards her dog. Her dog, forsooth! Now, the dog is an excellent animal, no one wants to dispute that fact, but when it is treated and regarded as something more precious than human flesh and blood, then it becomes an abomination. And I believe Father Vaughan has taken the trouble to tell his fashionable feminine congregations so from the pulpit. But that weird product of several centuries, the up-to-date society woman, still continues to squander money and affection upon her pet dog, and the brute is provided with an elaborate wardrobe—coats which cost anything up to five guineas apiece, silver collars at three or four pounds each, lace handkerchiefs, elegant beds, and all the other luxuries which children of the working classes never have seen and never will see. (It is recorded that one dog-collar recently made is of solid gold, set with real diamonds, the whole foolish bauble costing fifty pounds.) In every direction, moreover, a like wanton and wicked extravagance is exhibited, though day by day the strain upon the cord of common humanity that binds aristocrat and proletarian together grows more severe, and mutterings of the fierce storm of protest brewing amongst the vast hordes of the unemployed sound louder and more threatening?

It is poor logic, too, to say in this connection that if the wealthy spend their money .freely it must all, in due time, filter through to benefit .the working classes for whom their , manifold needs find employment. For so large a proportion of the money thus spent remains tucked away in the pocket of the already well-to-do tradesman, milliner, or dressmaker, with -whom the aristocrat and tlie millionaire, shop, that there is little noticeable advantage left for the artisans and work-people who slave for the prosperous tradesman. Wages do not improve though the monied classes spend so wildly, and this because the employer of labour in Britain has got the whip in his hand, and with it can keep his serfs in fine control. He knows, and they know, that so long as the struggle to obtain work is as keen as at the present time, there is little necessity for the employer to increase the wages paid to workers. If they are not satisfied, they may leave, and he will find fifty others eager to fill each vacant ].lac<-. So serious a position of affairs as maintains all over Britain, and, indeed, in America also, should stand as a dire warning to new countries sueh as Australia and New Zealand. It would take a. wise man to enumerate all the many past mistakes and governmental mismanagements which have combined together to bring about this existing congestion of the Labour Market at Home, but while there is divergence of opinion as to other reasons, there is practically unanimity that unrestrained immigration by the lowest and most degraded Hasses of Continent al workers is one of the prominent contributing causes. Herein. »ml if this be altogether true of Britain, lies Australia’s danger and her need for wary stepping amid all the pitfalls presented to young legislations. New countries want population, but equally as much do they want xnat population to be of the best; their immigrants drawn, not from the dums of great British and Continental cities, not from the frail and siik, but from the honest, hard working men and women who would wdrk now if they could, and suffer so desperately both in porket ami spirit lx*«aus<‘ the struggle to obtain work is so tierce and unavailing. There must be thousands in the unemployed ranks at Home, even after we have eliminated the sick ami the shirker, who would be of advantage to Australia with

its thousands of unoccupied miles of country; to New Zealand with its industries undergoing slow strangulation for want of workers. The problem is how to relieve at once the congestion at Home and the under-peopled condition here? Surely it is time for Home and Colonial Governments to attack it in unison; not striving each on their own account to cut the Gordian knot with imperfect success, but working together hand in hand to achieve a mutual advantage? Such a oneness of Empire would be a crown and glory to the British race; but, alas, one cloes not expect ever to see it come to pass. There is too foolish an animosity and jealousy existing between the Mother Land and her Australasian colonies, in particular. While entirely in accord with Sir James Crichton Brown in his condeniation of the house-fly—an agreement which will give him keen pleasure, I am sure —1 find I cannot quite see my way to coincide with him as to his last pronouncement. It is a pity it had not reached New Zealand in time to be of sendee to the police during their recent prosecution for the safe ot indecent literature! According to Sii - James, speaking at the annual conference of the Sanitary Inspectors’ Association at Liverpool lately, the reading of what he terms " cesspool literature ” so discomposes and debilitates the mind that the physical health is undermined in direct response, and. disease is offered an easy entrance —phthisis or consumption being one of the most likely maladies to be incurred under the circumstances. Now, one has long been accustomed to regard the ordinary library book, as it passes from hand to hand, a dire source of infection and a useful carrier of disease germs, but it is something new to be asked' to regard the printed words as themselves breeders of disease. At that Tate, not a daily paper, not a weekly magazine, but adds its quota to this dread propagation of disease, since there is always some police report, some astonishing crime, some gruesome tragedy printed therein to discompose the mind! of the reader. .We have'got a rather energetic Health Department here in New Zealand, and I sincerely trust it may not occur to the officials- to take Sir James Crichton Brown’s latest suggestion too much to heart —otherwise they will be deeming it- their duty to prohibit the publication of printed matter, and then where would the humble Candid Commentator be ?