GOOD FROM EVIL.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 8, Issue 111, 12 May 1916, Page 6

GOOD FROM EVIL.

WAR'S SURPRISE. ENGLAND'S INDUSTRIAL CAPACITY. "The war has shown us that our industrial capacity is enormously greater than we had ever before I dreamed," says the Spectator. "We have been able to detach from industrial work probably at least half the able-bodied men who were engaged in that work before, and we have sent these men to fight in the trenches or to prepare for fighting. "Beyond that, w e have built up vast new industries merely for the manufacture of munitions of war. In addition to all this, we have succeeded in maintaining for the masses of our population a higher standard of comfort than they have ever enjoyed before, and also —though the fact has not yet been fully appreciated—in maintaining an export trade at the level reached 14 or 15 years ago. This remarkable achievement is primarily attributable to the mental and moral forces which have stimulated us all to increased exertions. THE QUESTION. "The question which has to be solved is whether it is not possible to make permanent use of this increased industrial capacity. "At present our increased capacity is being used for the purpose of destroying our enemy, and no better use could now be found. But when our ; enemy is destroyed, what are we to do with the increased power which we have proved ourselves to possess? WHAT THEY LACK. "The answer is that we must so develop the spending . power of our own people that they will be able to give full employment to their own energies. That is only another way of saying that we must raise the standard of comfort of the masses of the population. "If the millions of poorly paid people who make up the vast majority cf our population were in a position to enjoy a larger and more ccmfcrtable life, and were resolved to have that enjoyment their expenditure would provide the necessary market for the industrial energy of the country. Hitherto the standard of comfort of the masses of the people, though undoubtedly it has improved ■'rem decade to decade, has improved very slowly. "Probably 20 per cent of our population have too little food and too "scanty clothing.

"At least 60 per cent, live in houses that are unduly small, and have holidays that are too short. "There is no real necessity why these evils "should continue. They are due to moral rather than to economic causes. 'An enormous number of the poorer classes have so little conception ->f the larger pleasure which money can bring that they are quite content to earn a small wage. One of the most notorious difficulties in connection with the rise o£ wages among unskilled labourers is that the labourer orcmptly proceeds to work only two or three days a week instead cf six. He is contented with a wage that will provide him with a low standard of Tmfort, and if he has a chance of earning more he rejects it. KEEPING DO|WN WAGES.

"Another widely operative influence is the conception, very prevalent among certain sections of the well-to-do classes, that the poor ought to be content with very little. "This view operates in all kinds of ways. One of the most notable is the tacit agreement among farmers to keep down agricultural wages. "Even from the point of view of the employer's immediate interests, low wages are a mistake, at any rate when they fall below the standard which the wage-earner has set himself in life. For when a man is paid less than he thinks he is entitled to earn he will revenge himself by slack or dishonest work.

"When w e look at the problem as a whole, the thing is so absurd that it is difficult to understand why a community of forty million more or lees intelligent beings should permti it to continue. Obviously the higher wages the workman receives the better customers he is for the things produced by other workmen; and again, the greater amount of work that each wage-earner turns out, the greater is the amount of wealth to be divided among other wage-earners.

The price of benzine is high, but that does not matter when you drive a Chevrolet, because the consumpr tion per mile is so very low, and the price is still £24s.—Stanley Peyton, Agent. What is true is seldom new."

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