A Fool's Talk.

Maoriland Worker, Volume 2, Issue 15, 16 June 1911, Page 5

A Fool's Talk.

By " TOUCHSTONE "

If you would realise what a desperately funny world this is, go into an Industrial Arbitration Court. Do not mistake my meaning. About the Court itself there is nothing funny whatever. Far be it from my foolishness to impute that aught is laughable in the Law. The man who would laugh at the tragedy of "Whereas" and "Hereinbefore Provided" would find in the Catacombs no more than the materials for a joke. I am not built on such lines of illtimed tumour, and it was with all due solemnity I entered the Arbitration Court on a sunny afternoon of last week, throwing back one last despairing look at the blue sky as I passed through the gloomy portal, and furtively concealing my cap and bells beneath my doublet.

It was a little room in -which I presently fo\md myself, and though it was well filled with people, many of whom exhibited symptoms of being alive, there was such a sense of heavy quietude in its atmosphere that it might almost have been empty of breathing beings. Indeed, it -was the room itself that first held my attention. It overshadowed its occupants. It exhaled the Law from its walls, its ceiling, its floor, its furnishings,

The Law was plainly visible in the mazy pattern of its linoleum, in the angularities of its benches, in the slippery surface of its tables, in the dark staining of its panellings. And the Law looked d">wi» upon the sewtio from a counterfeit presentment of the Chief Justice, encased in a dingy frame, and bearing about it prima facia evidence of having been painted hundreds of years ago.

I felt sorry for the pigments in that picture as soon as I saw them. They wore an air of inexpressible melancholy. If they could have spoken it would have been to lament that they -were not expended on a more cheerful subject than the Law.

Has it ever struck you that the pigments used in tho production of some wretched daub might as readily have been employed in a masterpiece ? It is fearful to think of. There is in it the overpowering mystery of the thing we •a —Chance, that is in truth an inexorable law to.which has been added the terrors of the Unexpected.

I have shuddered in contemplating the destiny of a tube of paint, which, capable of serving the splendid purposes of a Titian or a Turner —of being suffused in the bloom of a Madonna cheek, or the flush of a Madonna dawn —is fixed instead in the florid gills of a Lord Mayor, or the crude ostentation of an auctionroom pot boiler.

But that is not what I -want to talk about. The Federal Arbitration Court is my theme, and I was remarking that the room in which it was held, though small, quite drowned in impressiveness the people assembled within it. Nothing seemed to be going on. The judge on the bench —one of the most unassuming and fair-minded of men—said what he had to say in tones so low as to be almost inaudible to unaccustomed «ars.

The bar was equally subdued in manner, if not in matter. There were a number of -very eminent lawyers sitting in a row before the judge, appearing for the {>arties in the case - . Such subtle, nebuous, hair-splitting points did they raise, and with such ingenuity and orictuousness did they argxie them, and split and re-split, and split them again, that a mere lay Fool had to gasp for breath, and grip the first firm substance at hand, to get a reassuring sense of reality. All around -were a congregaton of persons interested in tho issues involved, listening to the hair-splitting operation with dazed intellects, and that vacuous, what-does-it-all-mean countenance only to be observed among the spectators of a case at law.

Yet everything was done and said in a manner so meek and mild, that nothing seemed to be doing or saying at all.

The Law, emanating powerfully from every squaro inch of tho room, streaming , down on the heads of those present in an impalpable dust of precedent, rising mifismally from their feet, rolling in upon them from either hand in billows of technicalities, reduced their unparclunented humanity to a ghastly impotence.

Nevertheless, there was being docided in that Courfc a dispute affecting ths lifs

AT THE ARBITRATION COURT.

in " Worker, ,, N.S.W.

conditions of fifty thousand men. There were at stake there the welfare and happiness of a vast multitude of women and children.

One heard a lot of talk from bench and bar about wages, and rates of pay, and hours of labour. What it all meant was that those legal gentlemen, whose silken gowns in. every rustle sang a smug prosperity, were debating in their legal jargon -whether, for many families throughout Australia, life should be worth living or not !

I take that every intelligent Fool is well aware that in this -world there are two great classes, one of which thrives and -waxes opulent by plundering the other.-

Stated baldly, it seems incredible, more especially when it is coneidered that the plundered class is enormoiisly the more numerous.

But the World does not state it baldly. It is shocked when anybody does. The World has so entwined the plundering process with social forms, and habits of thought, and cherished institutions that its nefarious nature is hidden from all but the most/ piercing eyes. With such success, in fact, is the plundering, system disguised, that those -who protest against it are regarded as the

enemies of hallowed custom, and the hand of the thief is kissed as that of a benefactor !

Tell mc now, could anything be funnier ?

Ever and anon, however, a section of the plundered class become possessed of the idea that someone is taking something from them. They find themselves short of food and clothes, and the wherewithal to the means of comfort and pleasure, while all around them they behold people who do not work in tho full enjoyment of everything the heart of man can desire.

Then there is a strike. And as the World doesn't like strikes, they are so disturbing of its equanimity, it has established the Court of Arbitration to settle the claims of the plundered under the law.

At least, it has done this in Australia, where the plundered themselves have led the way, and elected to submit their grievances to legal judgments. a * * *

How curious when one thinks of it ! And yet how well that it should be so in tho order of evolutionary progress !

" I will go into the Court with you, O Thief," say those whose goods have been stolen, " and the Law shall decide of how much thou msyest legally rob us." In blunt words it sounds an xmbelievable concession. But it is only Fools in their wisdom who say things bluntly. Tho plundered, as a matter of fact, have not yet learnrd to trace their troubles to the Thief's hand, and arbitration is part of the educating experience through whi-?h they must pass. It is in this Court they will find out things In tho unimpassioned testimony of witnesses, in the documentary cvi dence produced, they will discern the truth. Legal formulas and hidebound traditions cannot long prevent them from perceiving that behind it all exists a robber class. The very narrowness of the "Law's outlook, tho jealous exclusiveness of tho proofs it admits, will only the sooner bring conviction to their minds.

The Court meantime is carrying on its work, at once immediately beneficial and fundamentally absurd.

" I will not permit you," it says to the

Thief, •■to take from these men as much •as you have been, doing. You. must rob them with more moderation. It is essential in the interests of sooial peace that a limit should be placed to your thieving propensities. You must plunder reasonably, and -with some regard to an enlightened public sentiment, which admires and honours the Thief -who leaves his victims enough to live on."

A curious position, I venture to assert, one strangely compounded of the hilarious and the heart-breaking.

Tliere they were in the Court together, all on a sunny afternoon in May, -with the Law in portentous gravity adjudicating upon their differences—the men •who say that they can't afford to be robbed of more than such and such amount, and those others who declare that it is necessary to the stability of trade and commerce, and the security of the Altar and the Throne, and the preservation of the Empire, that they should be given a license to go on plundering as much as ever they did. And yet, I repeat, it is well that it is so. The absurdity of such a social system will in this way dawn upon "the public mind.

Absurdity, we are taught at All Fools' College, is a more revolutionary factor than injustice. Men will rather bear the lash on their backs than the laugh in their faces.

The day will come when the world will recognise what an ass it has been. It will take itself out and kick itself. That kick will be the social revolution.

The Law, then, instead of being an oppressive spectre, arrayed in the mouldy garments of the past —the dead animals on its head typifying the dead ideas inside its head —will represent the perennial youth of the Present, and be the embodiment of the living will of live men.

That is why I went to the Arbitration Court—to observe the Social Revolution in the making. To see with mine own eyes the procedure which is destined to reveal to men the truth about the social system. That is all that is needed—that men should be shown the truth. Revelation is revolution.

Once men become aware of what they are doing in that Arbitration Court —fixing the conditions under which they may be robbed ; solemnly covenanting with the Thief how much he shall leave them to buybbrea the long re'gn of the Plunderocracy is over.

As a tragedy the evil might have survived ; as a farce it is doomed. It will pas 3 away in a burst of ironic laughter.