NIBBLES FROM "COMMERCIAL CIVILISATION."

Digger (Invercargill RSA), Issue 31, 15 October 1920, Page 4

NIBBLES FROM "COMMERCIAL CIVILISATION."

(By W. Hinchey).

The government, customs, conditions and trend of modern thought guiding and ordering the public and private life of the nations of the present day, are the product of the evolution of civilisa.tion, sPre£*d over several centuries. This transiormation of the people, brought about by the almost miraculous gTowth of commerciaJism and scientific progress, has not been met by a corresponding forward movement in the framing of laws governing the rapidly altering conditions to which the people were subjected. The malevolent effect upon the impressionable mind oi /8uth produced by the doctrine of "go slow" or "do little,'' together with the encouragement of the idea that every employer is an enemy, i's creating a danger of producing an individual who in his mature years may become an outlaw; of organised society. The industrial strike is one of the obsolete parts of our corporate organism. It \yas born in the infancy of our industrial history ; it ha® grown. like a parasite in the hive of manufactories ; it is the cancer of industrialism, which has robbed of its life many a promising concern. Who are they? What are they^this black-coated tribe, sleek-skinned in the fullness of their filched luxury, soft- . handed in the practice of nefariousness upon the innocent, oily-tongued in the smoothness of their grinning sycophancy, and damnable in the open-eyed lymg which veils their red-handed transactions under the name of "business principles?" They are the "middle men," each and every one of them in a lesser or greater degree clogging the channels leading to the consumers ; living by parasitical absorption upon the community and filling no position of usefulness in the social organisation. The commercial traveller in his peregrinations cultivates the mannerisms, arti. fices and histrionic appurtenances best caleulated to bring his clients into that frame of mind when it is safe for him to open his book and attempt to sell to the worried retailer something that he does not want, or that l\e may not be able to sell for months. Thousands of pounds are being expended in the support of commercial travellers, and these huge sums of money are put on to the price of goods, and are paid by the' consumer. Members of thfs army "swagger," where there are no other rankers, and where every man is a captain, throng the steamboats, railways, coaches, and first -class hotels. Their baggage and hampers of "peeps only" encumber the coaches at concession rates. Their portly forms fill the best seats in the gentlemen's cars, and they pu'ff the biggest clouds of suffocatmg smoke irom the best cigars. They demand the best rooms at the hotels, and as "public benefactors" get them at "cut rates." They are privileged to growl more at porters, waiters and earriers than are ordinary "human atoms;" they are connoisseurs in the culinary art; and are loud-voiced in their vulgar condemnatien of anything not sufficiently tickling to their greedy palates. The laws governing the sale of intoxicating liquors in all so-called civilised countries are, in their crude and incompreFiensible inperfection, a fair indication of the progressive intelligence displayed by the chosen representatives of the people in law-making. It has become a kind of fetish with a certain class of unbalanced, ultra-religious victims of hysteromania to fix upon "Bung" as an outlet for their erotic delusions, and they shriek about the evils of "drink" from the platforms, the pulpits, and the street corners ; the yellow light of fanaticism . flashes in their eyes ; their gaunt faces twitch themselves into the distortion of neurotic deliria; their mouths open and shufc, distend and contract in a succession of horrible, ragged semi-circlea and triangles with cinema rapidity, in their struggles to discharge the torrent of vapour caleulated to "gas" the publicans and fumigate all intoxicating influences. "Bung" stands quietly receiving ail this eniping like a bull eiephant dosing in the

shade of the palms, flapping ea" " an alternating motion, and swl tail from side to side to dnve a ^ flies which are tickling tne o s ^ cov«ring the amplitade of ta i «« ease. But "Bmg," W » M' ^ is not as sleepy as he looks, thesis of his attentuated ponent; in the natural law c the comfortable glow of his ^ ] ity attracts "cool air," and ^ ^ hurning gases in attempW his adversarj^, The power of appeht* ^ ^ "Bung" to the eminence o ,, gifts of the state. "vii^kv beer," lords from the ' wbg members of parliament ^ro rati„g eries" and the b°n s' a ffatcb the hall of wisdom, WW ^ wheel on the ship of s a > ^ctabib Ihe cloth of exduBV. «!" against the puiple ol ' ,