The Dominion. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 1909. RADICALS AND THEIR THEORIES.

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 619, 23 September 1909, Page 6

The Dominion. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 1909. RADICALS AND THEIR THEORIES.

.- .-■■■ - —, —»-—.—. • This discussion by.the Harbour Bo?.rds' Conference of the question whether the Boards ought to be. exempt from the operation of the . Arbitration Act—a rather profitless question to discuss—was given an interesting turn by the Hon. J. M'Gowan. This is not the first occasion on which Mr; M'Gowan, in his new freedom from Ministerial responsibility, has been courageous enough to denounce the economic unsoundness of the general principle of the Act. The tendency of the Act is, as be says', by a series of progressive awards to . force individuals and local bodies to "pay wages above the economic value of the work." There are people, no doubt, who will dispute the possibility of.paying excessive wages: who willsay that as labour creates all wealth, labour must always bo'underpaid so long as anyone but. an employeo' carries off a single fraction, of the wealth created. With those people it is useless to argue. But the bulk of, mankind is. sensible enough to realise'that the effect mentioned by' Mr. M'Gowan is an evil effect, and. in the long run destructive o£ the nation's well-being. At the same time tho evil cannot be : .: confidently left, as. Mn. M'Gowan "appears to hope r to work its cure. The; ovil results : of the Arbitration Act are brought about. silently : and remain just below tho'plainly.visible surface of society. ; they cannot be checked unless' attention is, constantly : focussed upon the tendencies ■ of. the legislation that.is based on'a defiance .of natural and economic laws. In his evidence beforo tho Labour-Bills' Committee last year, Miii Geo. Booth, of , Christchurch, quoted some striking figures relating to a large 'manufacturing business to show,-that.tho' Act- is a drag, on industrial efficiency— figures,that have never been challenged, although!. they ,recoivcd•• the. widest publicity, 3nd that nobody has ever sought to explain away!' Unless figures like these were quoted,, and , the.: cause ;of Ihem clcarly ; traced, their significance might never be. suspeetcd; .and'-in:'the.' future, when the sum total of the' levelling-down process operating in a thousand factories and ■"workshops had produced results 'which would make it painfully clear to overyqno: that something w.as..wrong with .industr.y,;; the trouble: would probably be attributed .to any but.the;real cause, ■•'

, For, as" is .pointed out; in a most able iarticlc.by.Mii. I\van Mullbr in the August' For}nig/itly,yOur politicians, emerged, from the,.empirical stage, have .not yet reached "the stage; of scientific ."■ analysis'. ■Mr. ; I wan : MuiLER/makes a useful; analogy.;; The primitive herbalist knew that chincona'bark, of which-he kndw nothing, would cure diseases of which ho knew as little..-He, was followed by what may be, .called the herbalist, .who imagined grotesque causes of diseases and attributed to. chincona properties which it : did "not. possess.. ;Last of all came the scientific analyst, who discovered tho real .cause'of malaria, arid the.real reason why quinine is. a • good medicament.' So. in liko mannor, tho politicians who plunge into 'experimental labour legislation, ■' and the; Socialistic leaders of Trades Unionism who urge, them on, reason, in this way: "Povbrty and its, attendant' miseries are due to -.the strugglo, for,, life.;: Jf there were no strugglo thore,would bo. no resultant ovil. Inequality in like, manner is due" to cempetition": if there were no competition there would bo no inferiority.". : ; What. Mr. Iwan Muller says of '.'tho new Trades Unionism" is specially Trades Unionism .under the Arbitration Act... ,; It' "consciously or. unconsciously aims at the establishment and endowment of mediocrity by, the elimination of competition":'■';.-. ■! .'..".

_ The infinitely complex system by which it sought so to control tho subdivision of labour that tho reward of labour slull bo pioportionato, nob to tho skill or industry of the individual, but to the joint amount earned divided by the number employed, is merely a device to equalise artificially that which is naturally unequal.; iris not difficult to seo. what must result'.from'-aii'attempt to ascertain a mean when the maximum cannot bo exceeded, and the minimum is left to develop as it will. The inevitable cbn'scquenco must be that tho mean will be perpetually lowered. With the extinction of competition— were' that possible—tho spiriij of competition must porish too. But the spirit of competition, if there be any truth in evolution at all, is the source of all that development which wo so proudly call progress. .Tho" strugglo for lifo, with all its attendant consequences, of. inequality and poverty, is'.- the mainspring of civilisation. / There is no Substitute for it, and>if it be destroyed the clock stops. Straggle is not only the causo| but ic is tho condition of progress... . ...

The curious thing is that the average Radical believes remedies' for the inequalities of society and industry are the "'high-water mark of progressive thought, arid that his opponents hold obsolete ideas. Ma. Laurensoh, M.P., for example, talked, at the Harbour Boards' Conference '■ of "the bitterness and bad feeling, that exist where there is no Arbitration Act and where strikes occur,''and imputed to tho opponents of the Act the possession of seventeenth-century-minds. It is sufficient to say that the-feeling between masters 'and men is at least quite as friendly anywhere in the' Empire as that which- exists in New Zealand, and that in Great Britain thoy have found that voluntary conciliation fforks splendidly. Moreover, havo no strikes occurred in New Zealand ? As to Mn. Laurenson's second point, wo suppose, that it is useless to try and reachihim by a discussion of'general principles. Wo may therefore ask him to make some inquiries as to the Code of Hammurabi, who ruled in Baby-lon-in ISSO b.c. Ho will find in it the principle of the New Zealand Arbitration Act, for Hammurabi was tho inventor of the idea' of fixing wages by law, unless, as is very probable', ho was only.reviving the idea of somebody who lived-ages before him.- The principle of a statutory fixed.wage was embodied in English law's passed in the reigns of Eicuaiid 11, Henry;lll, Edward I; and Edward 11. •Has' Mr. . I>orensos ever heard of tho Statute of .''AitiicarH S EuzAßEta o. i I

That measure stated that ' the current wages wore inadequate in view of the increased cost of living, and it prescribed that wages should bo fixed at Quarter Sessions, employers and employees being bound by the assessments made. Most intelligent people, know perfectly well by now that most of the current "progressive legislation"—those rills that make up the broad stream flowing towards Socialism and a Collcctivist State —are reversions to a condition from which civilisation has painfully emerged. To-day Collectivism ■ is'the mark of the lowly savage, society. And, as Mb. Iw.»s Muxler points out, ro-stating a general biological truth established by Darwinism, "the motto of Nature, to use the symbolism from which one cannot escape, is vestigia, nulla rctrorsum. Return to stages from which an organism has emerged means.degradation, or, in other words, a step towards' ultiniato destruction." Destruction, that is to say, .of the race, and'destruction only in the long r.un. But do not our Radicals care for Posterity? ' ■'■.'■: ..