NATIONAL LAZINESS.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVII, Issue 4984, 7 June 1926, Page 4

NATIONAL LAZINESS.

CAUSE OF ENGLAND'S ILLS. GOOD EXAMPLE IGNORED. It is a fact—not necessarily bad, but beyond dispute—that outside the South Sea Islands, and a,few other chosen spots on the earth’s surface, the English people are the laziest, (or shall I say the most leisured ?) on earth (writes Sir Philip Gibbs in the Sunday Chronicle). This may surprise some of my readers, and lea,d to indignant remonstrances, but I do not, exaggerate. We. have carried laziness to a point when it becomes not merely a habit, but an art. Or perhaps it would be better to say that it is scientifically, organised and efficiently arranged as pa.rt of our social system. There is, for instance, no other country in the world outside: the Britisth Dominions which has the week-end holiday. Here, in most classes of society, ifrom toil to bottom, it is regarded almost as -a religious observance. There are many jnen in this country, some tens of thousands, who have carried the philosophy Cjf laziness so far tha,t they abstain from work altogether as a thing abhorrent to their bodies and souls, and they live, not with any great margin of luxury, indeed with considerable self-sacrifice and hardship—as a matter of principle—on the dole .and the relief df public bodies r a,nd charitable institutions.

There is also growing up a younger generation of men, hardly more than boys now—who have never acquired the habit of work, and regard it as a moral disease from which, so far, they have been mercifully spared. There is a good deal to be said for this philosophy of life, provided that life itself is possible under such a faith. The. worst of it is that in this cruel world, it is sometimes necessary to work or die, and I am convinced, most unhappily, that if the English people as a nation do not give up the beautiful privilege of laziness, then as a; nation we. aJ’e going to die, slowly, but very surely. It is partly the fault of those foolish foreigners. They will go on working in a most unreasonable way. The Germans, are unhappy ff they are not working. No week-ends for them, whether master or man. No limitation of output, but every maji working to his full capacity, so that costs of production are lowered and prices are cheap in the markets of the, world. The French are desperate workers. A peasant family in France never leaves off working except to sleep a,nd eat. They are up at dawn in the fields, women as well as men, children and old grannies, stooping over the earth, tending every inch of it, weeding, hoeing, watering, harvesting. In the little shops the French woman toils with her husband all day long. The daughter does the bookkeeping ; the small boy does the errands.

In Italy they like their leisur©. The southern Italians are not naturally fond of hard work. But Mossolini ha,s passed a law against laziness. He has ma.de it a criminal) offence to be workless and idle. The whole spirit of his dictatorship, enforced by cudgels, is to establish efficiency, increased output, national energy in trade and commerce. It lias had that effect. One no longer sees beggars, lazy scamps, sleeping philosophers, lying about the sun-baked streets. Even dirt is disappearing, slightly, from the slums.

How are we going to compete With all these people in Europe, in many other countries, toiling for long hours on small wages, making many of the things that formerly they used to buy ‘from us, selling in the markets that used to be ours, and selling cheaper ? The answer is that we cannot, if we limit our output, demand high wages, and prefer our leisure. For there is a fallacy in that limitation of outputIt does not provide more work for one’s pals. It slows down the activity of the nation, puts prices up, cripple-s, industry, creates unemployment. With a larger output and cheaper prices in the markets employment increases and prosperity increases.

We can make up our mind to one thing or another. Poverty anid. leisure, poverty and short hours, or prosperity and harder work. We cannot have it both ways- Life is not. made that way in the world tb-day.

We may prefer poverty. We may see no ca.use for lamentation in the loss of world trade and world power. We may be willing to see unemployment spreading and young men lounging on the. dole. But don’t let us squeal if, having accepted the privilege of short hours and time to think, we find ourselves rather povertystricken on lower wages all round, and without work, even if we want it. There is only one alternative, in my judgment. It is to get higher wages all round, greater national prosperity, lots of money to spend, by abolishing that limitation of output which is, the curse of industrial England from an economic point of view, and working a little longer and a little harder, not only in the lower ranks of our social life., but in all ranks. It is the secret of American wealth, which some of us envy. though we profess to dislike it as a-, nasty, vulgar thing. There is something to be said for this, leisure of our. All work and no play makes Jack a, dull boy. Man does not live by bread alone. But we shall have no bread, or at least no decent, standard df life, no margin for the fun of things, unless we can maintain and even increase our export trade of raiw material and manufactured goods by which we have to pay for those things. Sooner or later, oh a philosophy of labour which limits the. output as, well as demanding high wages, we shall be hit straight between the eyes by the hal’d economic facts of life.

Over there, in the United States, wages are rising all the time. The standard of living, in a material way, is vastly higher than our own. Every family has its Ford car, and many other amenities and luxuries. It is done by speeding-up production. The “ speeding up ” is too sevehe. in some of their factories. They exaggerate that side of things, a,nd the 'rich American often has no time to enjoy his money. But, adopting the policy of the middle of the roajl, we should go halfway in their direction, or a little more than half. It is, I am certain, the only solution to our labour troubles.

Don’t let wages be reduced. That means dragging down the standard of living and limiting the. expenditure of the individual, upon which the general prosperity of the nation depends. Let wages be higher, if production is increased and cost reduced. Instead of cursing capital, let every working man be a capitalist, as most of them are in the United States. It would, of course, spoil the fine art of laziness which we have acquired as a national ha,bit. In some ways it would be a loss to the charm of our leisured life. But it would help us to survive in a world of competition —and that seems worth while.