Improved Living Conditions

Horowhenua Chronicle, 9 December 1913, Page 2

Improved Living Conditions

"Whatever may be in store loins during , the ensuing hundred years, it as sure as to-morrow's sunrise that there will be changes," says Mr ami Mrs Sidney Webb in their paper, "The New Statesman."

"Whether the existing , social order is good- or bad, the one lliing- .certain is (hat il will m>l endure unaltered. To put

moderately, we have every reason for suposing that the JMigland oil the year 201. : > will be as dilVerent as different from the England of to-day as the England of to-day is iron. I hat of I<S 1 ■" J . And history teaches more than the fact of movement : it informs us also of ihr nature of the changes in the m'uhi of which we are living, it even gives us sonic indication of i''ie direction .of the movement that is in progress.

"Viewed in centuries, our nation is certainly on ihe up grade. A hundred years ago the condition of the great mass-of tlie people was deplorable in Hie extreme. We know of hardly any evil of today that was not, in LSI-"!, relatively more prevalent and more destructive in its injurious • results. . . . Labour itself lias become to a yreatei , extent intellectual Used ; an ever-dwindling , proportion of the work is the hard and brutaiisiug manual toil of the past moit' animal than human; .-.!•.i!si an ever-growing , proportion is mat of the machine-minder, th' , electrician, or the motor drivei, at any rate compatible with civilisation and citizenship. "As a. consequence of these changes, the wage-earning class, high and low, has risen in manners and morals, perhaps even more than in means; and it is man ners and morals the capacity for 'team play' that make social progress possible. In this connection it is important to notice that an enormous and, as we think, a daily growing proportion of Jhe proletariat is transformed. On the one hand the section of unskilled labourers h;;s relatively dwindled. On the other hand a new section has come into existence. l'Vw persons realise adequately the extent to which the wageearners of all highly evolved communities have become a blackcoated proletariat.' In mir own country, of the whole eight-ninths of the whole population have incomes under £l(iO a year, no fewer than twenty per cent now fall within this practically new class o! 'minor professionals," who thus number probably one-third as man\ as all the manual working wage-earners put together. Kven organisation and science will, however, not avail without :i growth of public spirii, a recognition of the social obligation to serve the community, ami a willingness to serve in Hie democratic ranks. The •change of heart, we think we see happening as we compare the young with (he old— happening not so fast as we should like, but still definitely enough for hope. And behind it all there drives on silently the persistent pressure of a pcopje traditionally free: aware of its power: clearing its eyes from the illusions of the nasi: become steadily more alive to its common interests, and, if we mistake not, resolved to make Democracy ;\ reality in industry as well as in politics."