WORK AND WEALTH.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 855, 29 June 1910, Page 4

WORK AND WEALTH.

In the very interesting dialogue between Judok Sim and Mn. C.uiey at a recent sitting of the Arbitration Court some light was thrown upon the inner mind, as it were, of "the Labour movement-." Mb. Cahey had said that the unions, or at any ralu his union, would "cease asking for shorter hours when the week is fixed at <1S hours for males and '12 hours for fmnales." In the meantime they were only demanding ;v 06 hours woflk. "That is only a step towards your ultimate - 'gotiH 1, hie Honpur asked, The reply w?s;

"If every man worked 30 hours per week, it would probably create ;U\ tins wealth that h necessary." What, Jin. Capkv meant —wo are open to correction— was that under existing conditions, and with existing machinery, all the necessary wealth would be created if every man worked only ;!fi hours per week. We wish he were right, but the plain facts of life show ho is wrong. If we take, any single civilised country or the world as a whole we find that in order to produce the necessary wealth men must, on the average, work more than SO hours a week. To produce the same amount of wealth on a general average of ;3(i hours o'f work a week, one of two things would be necessary: either we should have to work more intensely, or we should require machinery that would raise the workvalue of our efforts. The fundamental fact is extremely well put by the Spectator in a review of Mk. DawBARx's valuable new book Liberty and Progress. Mr. Dawbarn quotes this pregnant truth from Bentham : "Poverty is not the work of the laws: it is the primitive condition of the human race." On this the Spectator comments as follows: Jfr. Dawbarn elaborates this fundamental truth, and points nut how raiserable is tlie lot of man in the unaided fight with Nature. It is by the organisation of labour and by the use of machinery that the world is ahlo to create sufficient wealth to bring comfort, and even luxuries, to millions whose primitive parents were naked savages. The portion of this huge product of wealth which the capitalist and tlio organiser of labour retain for themselves is a mere fraction of the total. . . . Even if tho employer gave up his whole profit, it would in many cases add no appreciable sum (o tho wages of his workpeople. . . . Broadly speakini, , , the improvement of tho position of poorer members of the working-classes, though it ought to be a primary object of all social effort, can only be secured by inthis end three factors contribute—the increase of capital, tho improvement of organisation, and tho improvement of the labourer himself. . But the Socialists and trades-union leaders are antagonistic to those factors. New Zealand is the last cointry in the world in which the Socialist theories can bo advanced with oven a slight plausibility, for here practically everybody is a worker. In one of his lectures J) it. Findlay proved from actual facts and figures that even a rise of Is. a day in wages in all trades would swallow up all tho profits. To cry out for less work is simply to cry out for stagnation. With tlio improvement of organisation and machinery the hours of man's labour will almost certainly be reducible, but it is manifestly absurd to expect that less work in present conditions will produce the same amount of wealth.