The Daily News. TUESDAY, JULY 16, 1912. THE LEVELLING PROCESS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 49, 16 July 1912, Page 4

The Daily News. TUESDAY, JULY 16, 1912. THE LEVELLING PROCESS.

To reduce life to a series of mathematical activities, carefully measured up and paid for by the yard, piece or period, is the ideal of the small proportion of disgruntled maniacs who unfortunately have so large a control in Xew Zealand. There is nothing quite so absurd as the general habit of taking a bunch of varied humanity, shuffling it like a pack of cards, and asserting that each individual lias precisely the same value ns each other individual. As an example of the point, musicians (that is, those musicians who are mechanics and not artists) have lately decided that no musician must, during his evening's work—say, at a concert, a picture show or a theatrical performance—play any other instrument than the one named in the award affecting his particular "trade." That is to say, the genius who blew down a cornet and was forced by the exigencies of the music to occasionally rest, must not be permitted to injure his health by reaching out to tap a triangle, and the psrty who consented to lip a clarionet would be liable to penalties for daring to bang an orchestral drum when the music demanded a bar or two of drum "music." When alleged art is attacked by the person who suggests that every activity should be reduced to a dead level of monotonous and dreary sameness, there seems small hope for the subsequent success of Xew Zealand as a competitor in the international race for place. A peculiarly virulent type of citizen who persists in disseminating the dead level idea in this country should be fought as if he were the plague, as, indeed, he is. We know that a large proportion of men are intcnselv interested in the activity wliich pays their wages and do not personally regard it as a mathematically measurable commodity. The striving for excellent service is happily not a dead virtue, and because it is humanly impossible to eradicate the personal desire to excel, it will become ultimately impossible for the fanatics to apply the yard stick to human ingenuity, special services and the larer .-attributes. The fact that an idling agitator who discovers a father employing his son in an activity run bv a union, may proceed against that man and get him lined, is one of the many reasons why the public should rise up and smite the dreadful levelling microbe that is biting the whole community. It is an extremely depressing thought that most human beings in

New Zealand should be ruled with a rod of iron wielded by men whose ideal is that individuals should work precisely like the cog of a wheel—without interest, without initiative, and with ths one end in view: to get it over as quickly as possible. Every loyal feeling to country, to employer, to one's fellow man, is systematically opposed;. A "worker" is admired not for the skill of , his work or his loyalty to his job, but for the size of his wages, the smallness of his output, and his antagonism to the person who pays the wages. The perfect willingness of this type of person to Temain idle as long as other people can be dragooned into supporting them is one of the most sinister indications at present appearing. The domination of skill, which is so marked as a result of the constant and successful aggression of the gallant "fighters," is a matter for greater alarm than the national debt. While the disposition to do less work and to do it as badly as possible grows, the results' are shown in our

greater dependence on outside help. To pander to the people who insist on the decrease of output and the lessening of skill is to issue an order for a national coffin. Virility, vitality and ability are not gauged by the number of streetcorner howlers who protest against the organisation of society and who do no useful acts in amelioration. The persistent attempt to drag the thinker down to the level of the mere delver is every day sapping the individuality from the people. It is unpopular in some quarters to be a good worker, to have ideas, to .be able to initiate, to do one's duty. The effect is to diminish keenness, courtesy, kindness, consideration, charity and loyalty, and the sin is to be laid at the doors of a small minority of maniacs who under a wiser regime would be relegated to institutions where the diseases from which they are suffering would be understood and treated. $ . ■