The One Thing Needful.

Maoriland Worker, Volume 2, Issue 16, 23 June 1911, Page 8

The One Thing Needful.

•-Whatsoever thy hand find to do, do it with thy might.' But guide that hand in its finding, so that thy might will be for the right. Find the first things first—bend your might to humanity's quest for truth and justice. Truth and justice need workers— for truth and justice. Anything rather than acquiescence. On every hand: — Freedom weeps, Wrong rules the land, And -waiting justice sleeps. And -this being so, in the opinion of all who have an opinion, it is fair to insist that Wrong be removed so that Freedom shall smile. For the wrong which rules there is a cause. It has an explanation. A remedy is available. The cause is the unjust distribution of wealth permitted through the exploitation of the workingclass. The explanation is that bottom wrongdoing makes all the mischief, as with a house of rotten foundations. Tlie remedy is abolition of exploitation, or prohibition of private ownership of everybody's .property*. Let it be said quite seriously and quite pointedly that every other remedy has been tried. And failed. Every- other measure, policy, principle, to-day being advocated as cure for social injustice—cure for poverty, unemployment, prostitution—has been tried. Has failed. Heart-wrenching demonstration of impotence! Religion. Charity, Temperance, Goodness, Protection, Prohibition, Land Tax, Toryism, Liberalism, Labor Legislation—all tried. And failed failed, failed. For still Freedom weeps, Wrong rules the land, And waiting justice sleeps.

Then is it not plain that elsewhere than in the already-tried must iccn seek for needed cure? Humanity must be saved or damned. Damnation lies in falsehood. The men who claim that salvation lies in things tested and broken are deceivers. Do such realise the awful responsibility upon them? Do they know that unless mankind climbs it must collapse? Will they not leave all and follow Truth? •'Where duty calls or danger, be never wanting there."' Whilst there are hunger, want, shoddy, adulteration, mind-deforming and soul-searing ills and evils abundant, is not their removal first and solemnest call ? Who answers No? None. But who obeys ? We ask that all agree there is Way Out. (Mankind has achieved infinitely greater things.) We then demand that all else be set aside until Way Out is discovered. If all the men and women giving their talents, means and life to causes so agreed then Way Out would be travelled with quickness sublime. Way Out would be found in Socialism—this is our claiih —and making it in the name of mightiest movement industrially and politically that the worM of our day knows, the claim may not pass unheeded but to tlie shame and loss of the heedless. When we speak of failures, we mean only in'the connection used. Failures as removers of economic troubles and the social sores from them. In themselves and for other reasons possibly anything but failures. This understood, no fair critic or opponent will calumniate us. We are not enemy of the people whose" ideas we have to challenge. Nor are we the devil they delight to. frighten with. But we must speak as conscience and reason dictate. For men and women who wish a better world there is one chief work to be done, and that is wipe-out Capitalism. Nothing else matters. Noththing else will be curative. Nothing else is right. Give to Emancipation the time, money, enthusiasm, gifts, and efforts devoted to other purposes, and within ten years we could have the millenium. And if men and women will not have it in ten- years, but act as if it were honest and truo to evade it as affair for a thousand years hence, are they to bo hold guiltless ? Don't pooh-pooh tlie millenial idea. We live in a practical ago. Miracles arc done daily. If it is possible for every adult to own a vote it Is possible for every adult to own his or her product. And that ownership will l>o the milleniam.