ANTI-POVERTY SOCIETY. " THE STRUGGLE FOR EXIST ENCE."

Te Aroha News, Volume VI, Issue 310, 24 October 1888, Page 4

ANTI-POVERTY SOCIETY. " THE STRUGGLE FOR EXIST ENCE."

--The monthly meeting of the Auckland ,j 'Anti-Poverty Society was held on Oct. 16 : ln the Masonic Hall, Newton. There 7 was a good attendance, which included ladies, and Mr A. Cowley, in the of the President, Mr J. Batty, illness, presided. After some preliminary business an able paper on " The £ Struggle for Existence " was read by Mr , Hoeold, who was loudly applauded on con- : elusion. ' * The speaker, after pointing out that the '» -problem of poverty was intimately con-,-nected with the land question, proceeded : , —The modern idea of absolute private property in land is only of recent date, and it cannot be supported by precedent), by reason, by religion, nor by results. In the savage state the idea of private property in -~ land was unknown. We had hard work to .■gob the Maoris |o grasp tho notion at all, - but when once they saw the drift of ; it, the natural selfishness of human _ nature quickened their perceptions, and "- now they are quite ready to individualise - their tribal rights, and thus their posterity . will be disinherited — a fate to which the '-' blessings of civilisation " will hardly re- " concile them. With all our talk about the advantages of private property in land, we do recognise the desirability of common , ownership in our native reserves, our harbour, church, education and other endowments. If these are good in a limited " measure for various public purposes, it surely follows that the extension of the land endowment principle could not be other than a very great public benefit. - Going back to the ancient history of the Jews, we find that although private ownership of land was recognised, yet it was held subject to charges which practically formed . the sole revenue of the country under its theocratic system. The tenth part of the yearly produce was claimed under the L'evi- . tical law for the support of the Government " and the poor, and we read that the Jews • were forbidden to reap the corners of their *. fields, or to gatherthegleanings of their har- : vests ; that if a man sold his interest in his ancestral property, the price should be go1 verned by the nearness of the "jubilee year," when the estate would revert unen- • cumbered to the family of the original 'owner. We read : " According to the few- - nes3 of the years, thou shalt diminish the ' price of it ; for according to the number of _•= the years of the fruits doth he sell unto thee." This represents a very different idea f private property in land from that of modern times, and we may also feel sure Shat if " national debts " had been invented in those days, the wise old law-giver would have made the " jubilee *' principle apply * to them too, and thus have checked the iniquity ofallowingany people to pledge indefinitely the credit of succeeding generations. "With kings came taxes ; the simple and • reasonable tithe no longer sufficed, and tyranny and extortion increased as time went on, until, exhausted by the luxury of their kings and their incessant wars, the world fell under the dominion of Home, and "there went forth a decree from Cajsar Augustus that all the world should be taxed." Three thousand years ago the Jewish law thus recognised the rights of the people to an interest in the fruits of the earth suffi- \ cient for all purposes of government and relief of the poor, and the land tax for which we contend is nothing more than the old -- and righteous " tithe," the loss of which is one main cause of the bitterness of the - present strugtj.e lor existence. There is a ' very marked difference between taking by , taxation the value accruing to land by reason of the growth of the community and all other forms of tribute or taxation. Man ,5, 5 has in all ages desired power over his fellow man, and that power he has always '. used for the purpose of levying tribute. 1 The 'assumed ownership of the land has - I'a'.ways been regarded as the most secure ~~_ and convenient mode of levying tribute, "" and when the earth and the fulness thereof ceased to be the Lord's and became the landlord's, then the people's " tithe " became the landlord's "rent." - * The kings taxed the people to the limits of endurance, until their power in that respecc was tempered and checked by assassination and revolution, and has :- now finally ceased. But a power has grown up the throne which now takes the place of Gesar Augustus, and repeats the decree "that all ' the world shall be taxed." This is the modern form of the coveted power of levying tribute. It is the most fearful power the world has ever known. It is utterly inhuman, thoroughly cosmopolitan. Neither " fcoui nor body, God nor devil, counts for 'anything in its calculations, and yet it may " be termed the sole disposer and absolute „ master of the ceaseless labour of the world. Many well-meaning persons have given up the hope of ever seeing a better state of things in this world ; they believe not in the ,- goodness, but in the badness of human - nature, and are content to quote the much- *.- abused text " The poor ye have always -with you." When tho^e woids were written, such a thing as the poverty of our -; large towns was unknown. The poverty of the London needlewoman, the sweating tailor, the unemployed mechanic, was un ; .known in the old world : the different "classes were more " in touch " with each 't: other. Our modern poverty is more -brutalising, more fatal to everything , that is good in human nature, than its pre- - - decessor of olden times. Forty years ago wrote: "Descend where you will _ into the lower class, in town or country : ; by what avenue you will — by factory in~,l quiries — agricultural inquiries — by revenue — by mining labourer committees — -*-'Tt>y opening your own eyes and looking - the sorrowful result discloses itself ; you £' have to admit that the working body " of this rich English nation has sunk, ror is fast sinking, into a state to V' which — all sides of it considered — there Lwas literally never any parallel. At Stocki port assizes a mother and a father are arZ~> raigned and found guilty of poisoning three i/of their children to defraud a burial society % .of some £3 8s due on" the death of each child. s£. They are arraigned, found guilty, and the authorities, is is whispered, hint that the case is not solitary, that perIQiaps you had better not probe further into Pfth&b department of things. This is in the |if autumn of 1841 ; the crime itself is of |*ftbe previous year or season. Brutal |c savages ! degraded Irish ! Mutters the idle of newspapers, hardly lingering on Ip this incident. Set it is an incident worth lingering on — the depravity, savagery and Irishism being never so well g^ admitted. In the British land a human j|tn6ther and father, of white skin, and prothe Christian religion, had done llrtihis thing ; they, with their Irishism, and and savagery, had been driven IpKjWclo" it. A human mother and father rfhad said to themselves — ' What shall we do escape starvation ? We are deep sunk SHeVe^in our dark cellar, and help is far.' g|Tfieytj~think and hint — ' Our poor little gtaryelihg- Tom, who cries all day for |pic|uals,r who will &cc only evil and jnot ||g6t)Sf:in \.this world ; Jf he were out of j he, well, dead, and the rest lofrus^?i&rhapB, kept' alive?' It is thought,

Ib is hinted, afo last it is done. And now, I Tom being killed and all spent and eaten, I is it pool* litfcle starveling Jack that must • go. or poor little starveling Will ? In starved, sieged cities, in the uttermost doomed ruin of old Jerusalem, fallen under the wrath of God, ib was said, * The hands of the pitiful women have sodden their own children !' The stern Hebrew imagination could conceive no blacker gulf of wretchedness- That was the ultimatum of degraded, God-punished man ; and we here in modern England, exuberant with supply of all kinds, besieged by nothing, if it be not by invisible enchantments, are we. reaching tJiatf Since Oarlyle wrote that, we have had more than forty years of " progress,*' according to the laws of political economy, and should surely have got past the " can nibal " stage by this time, if the wealth that has been piled up in England during those years were indeed wealth, instead of mere "invisible enchantment." Forty years sufficed, in spite of their waywardness, to take the Israelites through the wilderness, for with all their perverseness, they still acknowledged " the Highest " as their guide ; but we, for more than forty years, have, as a nation, deliberately and exclusively served mammon, according to the gospel of political economy, and the resultis anarchy, plans of campaign, strikes, starvation, boycotting, and worse than cannibalism—the horror of that Sbockporb hunger-cellar is multiplied a thousand fold, and among the ordinary mail news in the Stab of the 18th of August last we read of a clergyman giving evidence before the House of Lords that thousands of children were starved or otherwise murdered in England every winter in order to obtain the paltry amount of insurance upon their lives." Systems must be judged by their fruits, and in its police reports and society papers our system records its own "judgment and condemnation daily. During the century now closing our powers of production have increased beyond all calculation. Science has eriven us the true Aladdin's lamp, so that whatever we want can be produced with such ease and in such abundance as would have been quite incredible at the beginning of the century ; and we seem to have reached, as the final triumph of competitive civilisation, the miserable and absurd paradox that the people must perish of want because they produce too -much. We shall have to recognise sooner or later that we have been guided by a false theory of wealth, and we shall ultimately agree with Mr Ruskin that nothing has ever disgraced our country more than its acceptance of the doctrines of political economy as a science. It is the first instance in history of a nation establishing a systematic disobedience to the first principles of its professed religion. As a nation we profess every Sunday to bo lieve that the service of mammon is the exact opposite of God's service, and yet we relj on the teachings of political economy as the shortest road to national prosperity ! In the meantime it seems to me that until we are agreed on a true theory of wealth, a permanent settlement is not to be thought of. We have to learn, as Ruskin says, that the true veins of wealth are purple — that they run not in quartz reefs, but in flesh — and even that the final outcome of all wealth is in the producing of full-breathed, bright-eyed, happy-hearted human creatures. Our modern idea of wealth, unfortunately, tends quite the other way. In conclusion, I will quote a few words from an address delivered some years ago on this subject by an old colonist, who is now one of our Legislative Council. After sketching the various forms of human society which have passed away, and showing tbat, in its intense selfishness, our civilisation nurses the seeds of its own destruction, he said : " There are signs, however, that the world is not stationary nor \ a slave to blind fate. The highest faith of men is recovering from the divorce it has too long suffered from practical life. Men are growing less content to keep their Christianity for i church, or at best for home. Larger ideas i are actually invading legislation as they have already possessed the periodical press of Great Britain — the best political literature in the world. Comparing long periods, the progress is visible, the change of temper is conspicuous. But perhaps lam too sanguine. Perhaps a new Messiah is needed. If so, much of the message will be the old one. The Scribes and Pharisees, binders of heavy burdens, will still be denounced, violence will still be condemned, selfishness of rich or poor will still be proclaimed godless, brotherly love will still be a part of the chief commandment. But if distinctive credentials of the new messenger are sought, perhaps we shall hear this time — ' The rich have the Gospel preached unto them.' " Messrs J. Greenwood, Kelly, Withy, Warburton, the Chairman and others spoke on various points in the paper, after which Mr Hoeold repiied. The paper had been read at a previous meeting of the Society some time ago, and it was announced that it would shortly, with the exception of a few passages which would require to be eliminated, be published in pamphlet form by the Society. The (Jhairman stated that the Rev. E. H. Gulliver had kindly offered to give an address (subject to be announced) under the auspices of the Society, at an early date. He also notified those present that instead of meeting once a month as at present, meetings would be held whenever there wftd sufficient business of importance or papers to be read, such meetings to be convened by advertisement. It was also announced that the Hon. G. Fisher, Minister of Education, had joined the Society.