WEALTH.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1518, 14 August 1912, Page 4

WEALTH.

IS IT EQUITABLY DISTRIBUTED? A WORD TO THR RICH. INTERESTING SEIiMON BY DK. UIBB. At St. John's Church, Willis Street, oil Sunday evening Dr. tiibb delivered a second sermon on the Eighth Commandment, dealing especially with the question ot' tin 1 distribution of wcaltti. Urauting, he said, thai the correctness ot the definition of property given a week ago, namely, that which litis been honestly acquired, whether as tne gilt ol a relative or boneiactor, or earaeu by sweat of brow or uraiu; and granting that tne nglit to sucn properly was grounueil in the wilt oi uou, tne question remained whetner, in the present social-and economic condition, many of tne tluugs men cahed their own did not really in justice belong to other «people.

The Question of Questions. In other words; Is propcrtv or wealth equitably distributed in the civilised world to-day? This was the question of questions in the economic sphere. All tne battle between Capital and Labour, all rccent economic unit industrial legislation, tho graduated taxation of land, the Arbitration Court, and other things—nil were rooted in this .question. Over forty years ago the' late Principal .Dykes, iii his book on the Ten Commandments, had predicted that obedience to the Eighth Comandment would, in the next generation, tiud its sphere chiefly in tfie more equitable and uniform adjustment of the industrial problem, especially as between Capital and I-Jibour. , The prediction had been literally fulfilled. ' A Difficult Problem. On the very face of it the question was one of extraordinary complexity. Oao might h'old that' tho present stale of human society ill, economic matters constituted a flagrant broach of the Eighth Commandment, and yet find himself enmeshed in v.-hat might well seem insuperable difficulties as sooa as be taught an equitable method of adjustment. Who, it had been asked, shall adjust the fail' share of each man, and determine what each man has earned in tho common pro- | duet, when whole companies of men toil in the same enterprise; when one gives [ contributions to tho net result, his capital, and another his thinking, and ii third his skill of hand, and yet a fourth: his strength of muscle, and when the comparative value of each of these contributions has to be appraised. A Matter of Consciencs. Yet, said •!>. Gibb, there can be no doubt that some solution or approximation to u 'solution must be tound. You, cannot fight opinions with artillery. Tho conviction that wealth is inequitably distributed has ceased with the vast majority of people to be an economic, or social, or political question; it has become a question, of conscience. It has come within the sweep of the Eighth Commandment. It is not workmen alone who aro failing to receive their just share of the wcaltn ot the- community. One "of til', most irritating phases of the industrial' movement in Australasia—all over the world, tor thai, matter, but assuredly here—is the. assumption that only those whose toil is mechanic or manual havo any real grievance with the present social organism; while as a matter ol' fact a workman who has been earning wages since\ he was 15 or lti years of age, and is now making three pounds or thrco pounds ten a week or more, is much better paid than a school teacher who has spent toilsome years hi 'raining for his profession, during which lie earned little or nothing, and is now earning little qr nothing more than tho other. " The Growth of Wealth. .. But however that might' be, "speaking generally, a comparatively small number of persons in any civilised laad possessed most of the wealth, while.inultit.udes possessed next to nothing; multitudes more had absolutely nothing. The poor might not bo growing poorer, though this was often said, but the rich were certainly growing very much richer. 'In New Zealand there were few great fortunes, and few utterly destitute, and ultor destitution hero usually spelt out ill-doing, bu; even in New Zealand it was probable that wealth was inequitably distribute-:!, and in England and the United States there could be no question 1 of this. Dr. Gibb then gave a brief account of the growth of wealth in- these countries., mentioning, among other things, that two years ago tho gross income of the English pcopb was IU9 millions of pound*.' Twenty years ago it was. only half of that sum. In these twenty years the population had only increased from OS and a half millions to tt ami a half millions. Into whose pockets _ had the vast incrcaso of wealth gone? There could 1)0 only -one answer. Tho fortunes of the wealthy in England and America had bsconio colossal; the condition of the masses showed only a slight iinprove.mcnt. There was reason more than enough, for George Adam Smith's contention that ono .end of the nation had tho strength burned out of it by too much enjoyment of life; while tho other had l'.ot enomrb of warmth to be. quickened into anything like adequate vitality.

Altitude of the Church. What should lie the altitude of the Church of Christ to this state of affairs? It niu-;t, of course, be remembered that their Lord had kept silence on many questions. He had given no indication of tho value that was to be attached to particular kinds of labour. He had not taught them how to fix exact justice between master and servant. And- the Church could not speak where Christ had kept silence. i\nd it must also be ever lyirn© in mind that the Church's supreme task was to impress on men the truth that no material prosperity would be anything but failure 'if the spiritual elements were absent. Her duly above all otheT duties was to keep the music of a pilgrim song ringing iu the hearts of men. All this was profoundly true, but it was also true that tho Church could not shut her oyes to abuses, economic or otht'r, but was bound to brand them for what: thoy were, and still more to indicate if she could tho broad general principles upon which these wrongs might be righted and a solution .found of the desperate problems, that wore now a portent"of disaster and doom to the existence of the present form of human civilisation. Tho Cross of Calvary was the central theme of the Gospel, but the Sermon on the Mount was part of the Gospel, and so was the Eighth Coinniandment too. The significance of that Commandment was not exhausted "'hen you have branded mero vulgar i-^i - I' s ' re tched over to the issue with winch they were then concerned. Nothing that affected human nature, nothing that was vital to human interests and probtems, could or ought to be out of the Church s line. The first special work of 5v Church was the discovery of another world; her second dntv was the discovery of man, the worth 'of the individual and his rights. What the Rich Should be Told; Precisely so, and if property was inequitably distributed it was tho Church' 6 duty to bring, as far as she is able, the tact home to the hearts and consciences of all men and especially of tho rich and prosperous. If there were greed, and extortion, and regardlessness of all laws human and divine, shown by certain sections of tho manual toilers in our modern communities, could it be denied that this was largely tho outcome of the example that hud been .vet them bv the wealthy? The rich have to be told that tho limn who heaps up monev, im»sn»chve of the claims of God and man. i_s the onemy of God and man. They havo to bo told that tho man who amasses a great fortune and leaves it all to his children is probably his children's worst c-nejny, and is not a good man, however pious he may have seemtd to be. They have to fee told that while tho Church has no call and no ability to pose a_s an economic expert, she can. in her Masters name,' Mess all legislative enactments which aim at a-fairer distribution of the good things of life. More than 10 yours, o»o that. especial bulwark of conservative thinking in theology and social ethics. Professor H.idgo. had said that though tho <jf prop?! (\* wa« so that a >non conhl (b'ns ho will with his own. it did not follow that the right was unlimited or that the civil ; a ;V '}?d no control over the uso and dis- , tnliutwn of Us Rrowrtv, Legislation has.

probably t'Oiifl. furllur than this jfrcal writer would have approved, but it haall been in line with his dicLuin. ,1 thin!;, .-aid Dr. llibb, Unit if jh;; m j 11 ionaiif> iiml multi-millionaires of other lands, und even till' men 01 n hundred thousand nmoiifr ourselves, had us n. rule shown a Rioaler regard to the common i,".'od. anil had ihed while they lived, and bequeathed when they dial a just proportion oi their po.-scssions lor the service oi' (.io.l and humanity, the withers oi' Hie wealthy would not have been wrwij? a*- thev are this day. 'I'iiry have not m.>rali.<-ed 'their v.<vilth; ami it is muraliscd lor

A Paradiss of Fools, As they li-tened b these things, ho a.-ked them to purge their minds of every Ttftijre of the notion I'.iat he sympathised with the dream of a human ,-ociotv iu which nil men will -harp alike in the good things ut' lite. That was I'topia; it was a. Paradise of I'col,. There would always be .sonic men who would mrn more than otIKM-s, i„itl what they earned, m> loiik a, H" did nut exceed their e(|uitablo share, ■they desvivcd to possess. Takf nwav the men who th:.nk and the men who plan and devi-.?, the men v.lw invent maehinery, anil find markets for our commodities, and the workers will bo us she*,, liavinif no shepherd. For the syndicalist and III*? toderahonist, lor thu hateful tyranny whicli cerhiin sce.tidns of (ho bibourinjj classes would iuipc.'o on the K.-;t ol' the people, he had the abhorrence. Of those thins;, «nd of the way out—the way of co-ojicratioii and profit-sharing—lie would fpeak in another term 3ii.

"Tumbling over Each Other." This Mriinn had failed of il> objoet it it had not left upon their minds t le impression that Iho siwaker held that 1 he wealth, 01 the world was not equitably diMTibutea, and that the meajis must lie found of a fairer distribution; yet ho desired to wholly dis«ecinti* liim*.?lf from those, whether ministers tf or otlisr men, who iit this coimtrv and other lands tumblin- over eacii other in t l'Sif oagei'iipjs to assure the workers that all tiM'ir iduals were ri-lil and all tlK'ii lnWliodj* pi'Aisovrortbv, nnet wlio, f.o quote a sentence of ])ean Inge, "regard it ILS a kind <if impiety not to float with the stream, a feat which any dead <V' can accomplish, and ;i hiiul of treofon i:ot to lick tlio dirty lx>ots of our masters jor the time being, a complaisance which every live dog is to porform." In conclusion, Dr. Gibb s;iid that doubtless by and by they would beat their music out, but the hope was reasonable onlv because Curist was on the throne. lli« kingdom m art come.