WORK OR PERISH.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 2373, 29 December 1921, Page 4

WORK OR PERISH.

“British industry cannot sustain a repetition of such experiences a> those of the last twelve months,-’ said the Bishop of Durham, at the Diocesan Conference. “We must, as an industrial community, work or perish, and work must lie remunerative, that is to say, profitable. Only when profits are made can the qnestion of their equitable distribution he reasonably discussed. If the discussion is to be conditioned at even turn by labour conflicts in which the wealth-creating machinery of the community is to be unused and the markets in which Bri'tisli goods are sold are to be transferred to foreign producers, it needs no aigiunent to demonstrate that the nation will speedily be brought to destruction. Great harm is being done by reckless denunciation of the social order, often by men who have no special knowledge either of the history of society or of the present situation. Hypnotised by their own enthusiasm, they allow themselves to use language not only altogether excessive, but highly inflammatory. Some of the clergy are great offenders in this respect. Having created or stimulated popular discontent by rhetorical exaggeration, they point to the discontent as itself sufficient proof of the existence of social oppression. They are immersed in a fallacy. There is no necessary or invariable connection between an unsatisfactory state of society and . revolutionary sentiment. There is much food for thought in the notorious fact that the critics of existing society, so far from being able to count upon the popular discontent, arc compelled to organise an elaborate system of defamatory propaganda in order to induce the multitude to belicw t homselves oppressed.”