POVERTY IN SPITE OF PROGRESS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 119, 3 October 1941, Page 14

POVERTY IN SPITE OF PROGRESS

Reviewed for "The Listener" by

F. L.

COMBS

POVERTY AND PROGRESS NEW ZEALAND. By Dr. W. B. Sutch. Published by Modern Books, Wellington, Price, 5/-. H. TAWNEY speaks of the Middle Ages as a time in which an effort was made to control economic activities and to direct them to moral ends. Nineteenth century economic teaching took up an exactly opposite standpoint. "Give unlimited scope to the quest for competitive profits and morality will for certain be a by-product" was its teaching. Dr. Sutch on page 21 of his book, Poverty and Progress in New Zealand, stigmatises this teaching as meaning "in its plainest terms, every man for himself," and goes on to say, " This doctrine of rugged individualism was held to be the best method of advancing the wealth of the nation." It made things tough in the Old Country and rather surprisingly just as tough

in a new colony which in 1860 had only 60,000 people to 64 million acres. It was particularly hard on the social services which never seemed able to catch up on their time lag. If every man was to be strenuously and single-mindedly absorbed in self-advancement it stood to reason that community services would be given a back seat. These community services, Education, Health, the prevention of unemployment, are the matters with which Dr, Sutch most concerns himself, In his knowledge of his special subject, he may have some peers, but few, if any, superiors. His presentation of his argument is clear and orderly. His main theme seems to be that Progress, even when making visible headway, has never been able to rid itself of that old man of the sea, Poverty. The slumps re-

curring nearly every decade from 1840 on, lend weight to this contention. * Fy * HE book has half a dozen interesting angles. That most interesting to the present writer is the manner in which, in spite of laissez-faire (no State interference; let everything look after itself) collective authorities keep butting in. The theory was all against their doing so, the facts, those of sickness, destitution, unemployment and ignorance made it imperative that they should. So whether Tories, Radicals or Liberals ruled, the trend was toward an everincreasing amount of State activity, the continuous expansion of the State services. The growing number of readers who feel it their duty to know New Zealand first will be grateful to Dr. Sutch. He has his own point of view, and while he collates and states facts, he regards them as stepping stones to a better state of things. But to have a standpoint is not necessarily to be a partisan, and those who disagree with him will be able to dissent amicably. He may not see things as they do, but he sees straight according to his (pretty powerful) lights, * * % POVERTY AND PROGRESS is an account of an evolutionary growth of collectivism, sometimes painful, some-

times ham-strung. It drags its wounded length along from epoch to epoch, yet on the whole it rather amazingly waxes in strength. The belly and the members even seem in a dim and fumbling manner to be arriving at the conclusion that the body is more important than any of them: that indeed it is both them and more than them, In making so very much clearer this concept of well-being as a community matter, Dr. Sutch has performed no mean service to his generation.