A POLITICAL ECONOMIST.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 138, 10 July 1909, Page 1

A POLITICAL ECONOMIST.

FROM BERLIX. A mew eight-hour problem. Visiting Wellington at present is Professor Alfred Manes, of Berlin, a student of political economy, who is travelling the world in the interests of institutions in Berlin, Frankfurt, Cologne, and Leipzig that are practically universities of, commerce. With the Germans, commerce is Something more than a mere means of livelihood—it is a profession to be studied in its manifold phases as closely as any other of the recognised professions. Xot content with home knowledge and book-learning, theae institutions are reaching out in an effort to gain first-hand information of the commercial conditions of every country in the world, and incidentally such legislation and laws-in-praeticc that affect commerce and the social condition of the people that live under such laws.

Professor Manes admits that New Zealand's experimental legislation has interested him for gome years', and what he has read about the Dominion has intensified the desire to sec if "things arc as ithey are printed." "It is stilted," .said he, "that New Zealand is the working man's Paradise —I have come to peep into your Paradise to sec how it is all worked out. We cannot help being interested in your country—it is here that you have in practice all those things that are theories to us—your old-age pensions, ■women's franchise, conciliation and arbitration courts, liquor laws, hours, of labor. You have the practice without theories; we have theories without practice. We want to 'know.' Of course, here you only "have one million, we have 61 millions; you increase a few thousand a year, we a million a year. Wc have a powerful'social-democratic party which you only have the beginning of here. These varying conditions make one careful in deducing opinions. "All the laws you are practising now must he followed in Europe. They are giving old-age pensions now in England, and women's franchise must come. It js the same with the liquor laws. Is fhe State better, are the people happier,) under these laws, and what effect have I they on trade and commerce? That I must try and find out. |

"Your hours of labor—yon work eight, hours a day, sleep eight hours—what of, the other eight Hours? That is the point! Never mind what hours are worked— it is what is done in that other eight hours. We hare people who shout for eight hours—six hours! But what are they going to do in the hours they 'do not work or sleep? That is the question—the whole crux of the social problem. It is too long a time for recreation in the ordinary sense. I don t know what you do here—it is different in our big cities; we have bands in the gardens, theatres, music-halls, gymnasiums, lending libraries', but that is not all. Our working people are attractcd by science and technology, and by paying a penny can attend lectures oil the subjects that they are particular!;interested in. Yet our people do not have so much time as yours. It :'<s strange—you, with all this advance legislation, have no professor of poiitical economy. Do youknow why?—it is because you are all political economists," saiTTrofessor Manes with a smile.

"I have asked several people to tell me the difference between the Government and Opposition parties, and none of th'em could. Some say there is no' difference—just the ins and the outa.

"If your laws are good—the new social laws you have passed—the land should belong to the State. You can't £ivc the land to the individual under such laws; they won't—" Here the professor interlocked the fingers' of his i'ands, inferring the word "dovetail." The broader deduction was that the freehold and Socialistic laws are as oil and water—unmixable.

Professor Manes has been long enough in Wellington to taste our beer, and he finds there is no health in it. "I drank a small glass of your Ijeer. It is very heavy, and vent to my head at ome. Why don't they make it light? The Government should make them. It is too had to make the Jicer so heavy. In Germany the KhVct of drinking two long glasses of our 'beer would not be so great as one of your whiskies. Yo.ir beer wants legislating upon," Dominion.