LET US LOAF!

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXV, Issue 1135, 19 August 1913, Page 3

LET US LOAF!

A HEART-FELT prayer

At the moment, the nations are working overtime in a cutthroat, commercial, mental, and physical competition. The nation that has the best physique and does the most work will win. Fhe nation that is tired, that lies under a figtree planted by someone else is dying. There is a very widely disseminated desire to do less and to obtain more for a minimum output. “I stand,” said the representative person, Mr Webb, M. in Parliament the other day, ‘‘for a six hour Neither Mr Webb, nor any of his followers and admirers, stand for less tucker, or fewer luxuries, ora smaller quantity of anything but work. If the nation brc nieWebbites, it would cease to count in the universal scheme of things \yithin fifty years. The question is not worthy of discussion, because Mr Webb ‘‘stands for a six hour day.” It is worth discussion, because thousands of people who do not produce but who handle the things other people produce “ stand for a six hour day.” It is not really a serious threat. It is merely a silly one. A new country that chooses a time when it has done so little work that it has to borrow five millions in a single year to keep going on, is a composite fool ot large calibre. “I stand,” said the wife of the United Labourer, “ for a six hour day for myself. I stand for the principle that I shall begin my multifarious duties at eight in the morning and knock off at 3 of the afternoon. Let the State look after the old man’s meals, the care of my children and everything else. I’m finished at 3 p.m. I m on strike for a six hour day. Even the most crimson Red Fed. would be startled if Mrs Red Fed. and all her sisters issued that ultimatum, wouldn’t he? Always note please that this country or any other country could get along quite nicely if those who stand for a six-hour day didn’t do a tap. They are handlers, not producers. Further note that it isn’t the producer who depends on the sixhour apostle, but the six-hour advocate who depends on the producer. The “lesswork” person isn’t essential in the great scheme of things. He is just the people's problem, the national burden, the old man of the sea on the shoulders of Sinbad. It is, you see, absolutely necessary for the six-hour dictator to have a job that is created for him by someone else, before he can dictate. He hasu l created anything. He leaves creation to the other chap and expects the largest dividend of the other fellow’s mental and physical stock-in-trade. He never realises the possibility of nobody begging him to take a job- < The world must go on producing for him, and he shall be aristocrat—perhaps. The people who could be most easily spared in a community are the people who persist in believing they are the Indispensables. Should this country ever have to fight tor its existence with a country that has no scruples about working and where organised loafing has not entered, the stalwarts who believe that a country is doing all right when it is spending more than it earns, will be the nation’s beggars. “ I stand,” says the farmer (who keeps every Red Fed. in New Zealand from starving), for a farming day that will produce only enough food for myself and mv family.” That decision would settle all the industrial nonsense ever talked by any kind of parasite. Cities are the hotbeds of those “who stand fora six-hour day.” Cities really don’t matter twopence. The futility of this particular city would be demonstrated in n fortnight’s blockade. We don’t live on asphalt, and the work of all the organised unionists in a closed up city wouldn’t feed one man. The man who stands for loafing stands for the muscular and mental flabbiness of the country, he is an apostle of “hands up. ’ He can only prevail as a national power, when the majority of the people of New Zealand have softening of the brain. The phase will pass, New Zealand is too young for national decay, and too undeveloped to become a lotus-eater s dreaming ground. One thing is inevitable. New Zealand will be a great and populous country, producing enormously those things which are alone a country s wealth. It is not at all certain at present what the particular colour of the ultimate saviours of this country from sloth may he, but it is at least certain that the six-hour apostles who eat the potato but don’t grow it will have nothing to do with its future greatness. The nation that holds New Zealand won’t be a nation of loafers.— N.