N.Z. WELFARE LEAGUE

Southland Times, Issue 18852, 18 June 1920, Page 2

N.Z. WELFARE LEAGUE

THE WELFARE MOVEMENT. AND THE REAL CLASS WAR. (Contributed by the Welfare League). Recent times have seen the rise of a movement that will probably have considerable influence upon our civilisation. We find it gathering force in Great Britain, America, South Africa, Australia and other lands that could be named. At its base the movement is a serious attempt to solve some of the serious economic, industrial and social problems of our time without resource to revolutionary means. Taking Society as its subject matter it treats the same, not as an aggregation of individuals bound together by some hypothetical social contract which may be varied at will; neither does it regard society as a machine upon which the parts t are wholly dependent for their utility. Society is taken as organic in character and composed of members which are in themselves also organic. The problem then becomes one of studying the laws of organic being and of finding the true methods of harmonising the needs of individual man with those of the collective being of society. This central idea is neither individualistic nor socialistic, but frankly humanist. The coming together of persons of like thought on this basis has created a movement that has for its objective the advancement of the general welfare. It is not a school of economic theory', it is not a political party, and it is not a class movement for the protection of any special interests. Put shortly the formula cf this movement is that, if the general welfare is improved then every legitimate particular interest will benefit, and only those interests will suffer which are inimical to the general welfare, and ought not to exist. HOW IT HAS WORKED. The Welfare movement found expression during the war in various phases of organisation for the development of national efficiency, and for the human protection, betterment and safeguarding of the lives of the thousands upon thousands directly affected bv the war. * The value of the Welfare work done by men and women of all sections of society during the war will never be fully recognised. What should be recognised and kept ever in mind is how we came together as a people, laying aside all differences of creed, party, class and the disputes that divide us from each other. The great world upheaval of the war has had its psychological effects in the stimulation of human thought. The demands for greater efficiency, for more complete organisation, for higher and broader humanity, though forgotten by many .have left their impress deeply stamped on the minds of other earnest men and women. Public policy, though slow to alter, is being affected by these causes even now. Let anyone read the report of the English “Health of Munition Workers’ Committee” and they will find full evidence of the movement for the general welfare of at once the great mass of industrial operatives and the whole nation. This idea of general welfare has not as yet been concentrated in a single organisation, but in the Industrial Council plan in the Whitley scheme, in the Industrial Courts’ proposal in America, in the holding of national industrial conferences in England, South Africa and Australia we see the welfare movement at work. Throughout the whole we find the movement is to effect the purpose of bringing Capital and Labour into closer touch with each other so that the employers will realise toe problems which the working operatives have to face, and these same operatives learn something of the harussments and difficulties which the employers have to meet. In this wider knowledge it is hoped that the general welfare will be more fully safeguarded.

THE CLASS WAR. Mark Twain once remarked (no pun intended) that certain societies in Europe consisted of and no accounts. Roughly that is somewhat likf the division of society that really affects human progress. There is the class that is all for self and cares nothing for humanity, and there is the class that recognises human fellowship and is ready to help towards human betterment. In the very nature of things, either consciously or unconsciously, there must be continuous war between these two classes. A proper reading of the social and industrial history of our Empire should convince any one that the persons who have proved niord earnest for the general welfare were not drawn from any' single strata of society. Amongst the men and women prominent in their efforts for human advancement we have had the aristocrat, the middle-class personage, and the man or woman, drawn from the ranks of the wage earners. For purposes of their own the revolutionists seea to represent society as consisting of capitalistic exploders on the one hand, and the poor but honest toilers on the other. The historic mission, they say, of the latter is to destroy the former. This is a travesty of actual" life. The capitalists arc not all fiends, nor are all wage-earners angels. Capi;al and Labour have this in common, that if thev hv internecine feud destroy' industry they must both suffer, as both depend on the industries being maintained. The meaning of the Welfare movement of our nine is that men and women of all sections of society arc learning that it is time the honest petiole, the (icople who want general betterment to put -aside artificial restrictions and organised for the general welfare in a stern warfare against ignorance, .selfish bombast and the of dictatorship, either of Labour nr of Capital.