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Taranaki Daily News, 20 December 1919, Page 11

VI.—THE PILLARS OF SOCIETYCharles TI. on one occasion received a gift which was at the time considered well worthy of reception even by Royal hands. It was a few pound? of tea, There are now in this, country about ten million households, and in all of them, except where it is banned by deliberate j choice, tea appears on the breakfast table every mbrning as a matter of course. "The delicate juice," as it was celled by the first European writer who refers to it, the Italian Botero in 15!)0, was at first only sipped by Royalty as the rarest of luxuries, and is now the common drink of all. If there are such things as secular miracles, this is one. It shows in the clearest fashion the good work which the economic organisation of society can turn out. Yet in how many households is. a moment's thought ever {riven to that real marvel, the teapot on | the breakfast table filled with its "deli-

cate juice"? It is worth while then to evsmme the way in which this noteworthy fact of the morning cup of tea comes about, for it is not only a familiar fact but a typical one, so that, our examination of it will take us down to the foundations of society. Notice, to begin with, that the cup ot tea on your hrenkfast table is yours. It ia a commodity about to satisfy a want, and as you feel the want, you must be able to control the commodity. If as.is now happening daily in Munich, another could snatch the cup out of your luutd w you rnia«4 it to yow liffa.

want would go unsatisfied because your property had been taken, from you. There was a time when a man's power to dispose of his own property in the satisfaction of his own wants depended on the strength of his right arm. Now the law is your right arm. But the cup of tea on your breakfast table is only your property because the tea plantation in Assam or Ceylon is some one else's property. The two rights are linked together. If out there the law failed to maintain social order, so that tea-plantations were grabbed by any man or body of men who could exert physical force enough to do it, there would soon be no tea-plantations there and no cups of tea here. There is a well-known case in point. .Lowland Scotch fanning is now about the best in the world. How and when did it become so? When Highland raiding was put down, leases for terms of years introduced, and the farmer guaranteed the enjoyment of the wealth he produced.

HEALTHY COMPETITION. The first pillar oil which society rears is private property. This floes not mean that society has no claim on the property it safeguards. It?has; in England to-day that claim Is most thoroughly and rigorously pressed. A man died recently leaving a fortune of more than two million pounds, of -which the State claimed over £BOO,OOO as "death duties." It does mean that having, in its own interests, stated and exacted its own claims, society must, also in its own interests, see that the balance vftteh it does not claim is rigorously safeguarded for the owner. How much society can claim without defeating its own object by destroying the motive to create wealth is a very important question. The legalised claims of Chancellors of the Exchequer might reduce the Lowlands to the low economic level at which they were freed from the illegal exactions of the Highland caterans. In the next place, the cup of tea i' on your breakfast-table because any one who likes is free to offer to serve you, the consumer of tea, in the capacity ot a supplier of tea. And since men have of their own free will undertaken this work, and of those men you have selected one to serve your turn, he knows tnat he must do it well or lose your custom. There is nothing improper or immoral in changing your grocer because you do not lik6 "his tea—in compelling him, that is, to compete with his fellow-grocers for your custom. It is never, as you know, competition which serves us to which we object, but only that competition which injures us. But we cannot have the advantages nf the oiie witli.out submitting to the stress of the other, and in fact every man worth liis salt, whatever his station in life, is tlie better for having to compete with others. During the war competition had to be superseded in many directions by rationing. The. way in which we braced ourselves to the new system and made the best of it was remarkable, but everybody welcomes the relaxation of control and the consequent revival of competition, because the war showed how much better served the public was when it was "up to" its sen-ants, the shopkeepers, to serve them well or lose their custom. Intelligent, competition between individuals able to compete is the best safeguard of efficient social service, and it is the second pillar 011 which society rests.

lii the third place, your morning cup of tea is at your disposal because there is an equal chance for any person' who so desire to become its purveyor. Castes and guilds arid "mysteries" no longer stand between any man and his career. Any man who wishes may become a grocer. That, is the modern way, less picturesque and not at all a beaten track, but a much more efficient way. The third pillar on which society rests is equality of opportunity for all. Granted, at is must be granted, that the society resting on these three pillars is not perfect in all its parts, it. is still clear enough that to knock away any or all of the pillars will simply bring society down in ruins. That was mere theory two years ago; it is now an indisputable truth established by sad experiment in Bolshevik Russia, It can never do a man any harm tD possess 'property, to feel himself brftced and stimulated by competition, to know that any path in life which lw has the desire and the energy to follow is open to him. True social progress then consists not in destroying these things, but in placing them at the disposal of every one. We can build better, but we must build on these world-old pillars.