WHILE LUXURY IS WASTE.

Taranaki Daily News, 5 August 1916, Page 9

WHILE LUXURY IS WASTE.

SOME TRUTHS BORN OF THE WAR. (By Robert Blatchford). Now, why does luxury mean waste? By luxuries we mean all those things which are not necessary to the health and welfare of the nation. Things which are unnecessary are not needed, to make things which are not needed is to waste labor and material. To employ labor and material in' the making of needless things is to withdraw labor and material from the making of needful tilings How obvious! Yes: but not to Cabinet Ministers. It needed a great war to drive that, and other equally simple truths into the heads of men who are supposed to be the brains of the State. Incredible as it may seem, it is, nevertheless, a fact that our superior persons imagined they had met my condemnation of luxury by the absurd contention that a rich man could not spend his money on luxuries without finding employment for the people. These sapient gentlemen imagined that all the people needed was employment. If you got them working all was well. But the fact is what the people' want is not work, hut food and clothing, and fuel and other things. Work i's not an end; it is a means. /

THE THINGS WE NEED. If in a community of a thousand persons nine-tenths were to spend their time in making and drinking beer or in making and wearing jewellery and lace, it would inevitably follow that the remaining hundred persons would have to work very hard, to provide boots and bread and Vegetables and milk and houses and carts and hammers and spades for the commonwealth and that after they had done their best the silly people would be badly housed and clothed and fed. That is to say, the more labor that is spent on making luxuries the smaller will by the supply of necessaries. And necessaries are things we need. Let us take a familiar instance. A man has £2OO a year. His wife spends £l5O a year on dress. What sort of comfort will the husband and wife and children get out of the remaining £SO a year? But if the wife spends £l9O a year on the house and £lO on dress the family/will fare the better. That is to sa-r that the less we spend on needless things and the more wt spend on needful things the better off we shall be. In .other words luxury is not a good but an evil thing. USELESS WORKERS.

If a married man with £2OO a year spends £l5O a year on drink he is employing labor, brewers, distillers, and what not. But he is employing men to do him and his family harm*; whereas he ought to be employing millers, farmers, tailors, shoemakers, and schoolmasters to do them good. Suppose I employ a footman, a. chaffeur, a lady's-maid, a cook, two housemaids, and a butler. I am finding work for seven persons. What are they doing? They are waiting on me. Would it not be better to employ those four women as dairymaids? We import a great many million pounds' worth of dairy produce, butter and eggs, and we import enormous quantities of wheat and vegetables and fruit. If I brushed my own coat (as I do really—when I remember), and if my wife cooked the meals (which she does), those menials would be producing useful things for the nation.

We employ large numbers of women and men and children in unpleasant and unhealthy factories. We export the cotton goods they make. We buy champagne, cigars, laces, and silks and jewels. If we stopped these luxuries and sent the factory workers who pay for them to produce food, we need buy less foreign produce, and the factory workers would lead clean and healthy lives.

If a rich man buys a iot of expensive luxuries; if he employs winemakers, diamond-cutters, jockeys, footmen, yachtbuilders, silk hat "makers, chaU'eurs and others, lie is doing just what I am doing if I employ a lady'smaid and a butler. He is employing a lot of women and men to wait on him and pander to his self-indulgence. Those men are not doing useful work. They are consuming necessaries and producing none. They are "workers," but they are useless workers. LUXURY IS AN EVIL.

There are millions of such useless workers in the country, persons who consume necessaries but produce none. Upon these people the rich man squanders his wealth. But for the fact that he employs all these people on useless work he could not spend his wealth, if we take from him the permission to employ jewellers, furriers, jockey, footmen and other useless persons he no longer needs his wealth. And if he no longer needs his wealth his wealth can be used to pay wages to the producers of necessaries.

Look what a lot of things the war has proved. Girls and women are doing men's work and • doing it well. Thousands of men employed in non-pro-ductive or useless work have gone to the front. They were not needed here. •They were parasites on the rich. They w ere ''luxuries" or producers of luxuries. This is not Socialism that I am writing. At present no one in writing or talking Socialism, except a few anti-Socialist pressmen and a few Cabinet Ministers 'and Sir Leo Chiozza Money. What I am saying about luxury is plain common sense and sound ecomomics, Luxury is an evil. Mr. Asquith has said so. He says it must be stopped. But he does not say how or when. It can only be stopped by a heavy cumulative tax upon incomes and by a prohibitive tax upon luxuries. Is our Government the kind of Government to stop it? We. must wait and see.