"The Public Has No Imagination."

Maoriland Worker, Volume 3, Issue 77, 30 August 1912, Page 7

"The Public Has No Imagination."

SHIPS AND SAILORS.

Blatchford at His Best.

"The public has no imagination. When a ship goes down and over sixteen hundred human beings aro drowned the public is shocked. It can understand and appreciate tho awful facts, and it is prompt with sympathy and with help," writes Mr. Robert Blatchford in the "Clarion."

" But the same public has been told ever and over again that every year thousands of colliers, sailors and railway workers are killed by preventable accidents. The public does not trouble about these losses. The Press takes no notice of them. No Mansion House Fund is opened. A great colliery accident in which a hundred men perish appeals to tho public imagination, and shakes the public heart; but the regular daily slaughter of workmen makes no impression on the public mind. Neither does the public disturb itself about the sufferings and deaths of the millions of poor. The public lacks imagination. Some Shocks Wanted. "What kind of a national shock would be needed to cause a great national outcry for automatic couplings? "What surt of a shock would bring home to the public the fact that loss of life from underfeeding, from cold and privation, and from preventable disease -is quite as deplorable and very much less merciful than loss of life by shipwreck? Which of us would not prefer to go down in evening dret*s and with the band playing, rather than to die by inches of some horrible disease in a dull and comfortless slum ? " I mean to say that for many thousands of our British people life is a continual tragedy; that to thousands evory year there comes tho loss of a father, a child, a husband, by accidents as preventable as tho loss of life on the Titanic. "Any shuntdng accident in which a woman's husband is killed is to her a disaster as terrible as that which has come upon the widows of the Titanic seamen. And evory year there are niore than six hundred railway servants killed in shunting accidents alone. Who will raise a voice or open a fund for the dependents of tho six hundred annually killed in shunting accidents? " I wish we could get tlie public to feel the same sympathy in all cases of suffering which they do feel and do show in special cases. It is not that the public liave no heart: it is only that they have no imagination. "Show any average woman or man a hungry child and either will make haste to feed it: tell ono or both of a million such, and you will leave the average nature absolutely cold. Ordinary Terrible Things. "To read of tho spontaneous outburst of sympathy, sorrow and generosity over this Titanic disaster one would suppose that no human being would be left in pain or want and uncared for, but it is not so; it is very much otherwise. " Now surely there must be some way of reaching the thousands of women and men who have proved themselves so sympathetic in tlhis instance; surely it must be possible to bring home to these good folk the great volume of human suffering which could be and should be alleviated. "If it is so terrible a thing that sixteen hundred human beings should TiTlost at sea, is it not also a terrible thing that twenty times as many lives should be needlessly sacrificed every year in our own towns and cities?"