MEN AND HORSES

New Zealand Listener, Volume 10, Issue 256, 19 May 1944, Page 20

MEN AND HORSES

GUILTY OF MANSLAUGHTER. ‘By W. B. Sutch. Progressive Publishing Society. F.CONOMICS is in many ways a stupid science; there is no space here to deal with the Mad Hatter muddle into which, ever since the time of bimetallism, it has got over currency quéstions. Its failure to push the analyses of free competition to the point where anarchy in production and distribution is seen to be inevitable has been a godsend to heretics and cranks; they at least can do no worse in the way of blindly fumbling for non-existent right-of-ways and ditching others as blind as themselves, But now and again economics makes a discovery, or rather a rediscovery, of some simple salutary truth, known, though time after time forgotten, throughout the ages. The discovery made to-day by Economics was made by lovers of that noble animal the horse somewhere about the year 2000 B.C. "Feed your horse well,’ we can imagine a general in "Ahmenhotep II.’s cavalry saying. "Give him good corn and clean chaff; ‘don’t overdrive him; let him have an annual period out to grass; above all seek to get your steed with you; what horse and man will do in a charge depends on the goodwill begotten of mutual understanding." To-day Economics, not without triumphant "Eurekas!", is telling us that that poor devil the Economic Man will produce more if he is decently accommodated and paid; if he is not overworked; if he is asked not for his maximum but his optimum; if he and his horse are on good terms with each other. Dr. W. B. Sutch’s pamphlet deals with this subject of Industrial Conditions and Industrial Relations. The pamphlet is timely because in spite of the war New Zealand’s best is not by any means the best. In appealing for the conditions accorded to horses in the (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) time of the Pharaohs, Dr. Sutch does not labour, though he stresses the obvious. He has marshalled an array of telling facts and uses logic and common sense in their application. His conclusion is that to get the industrial machine to do its best it will need to be overhauled and humanised to a far greater degree. It is important that Dr. Sutch corroborates Dr. Hare in regarding New Zealand as not ahead but behind in the matter of industrial relations. Britain is doing fairly well in the handling of her factory problems, but, even in Britain, the land of the Derby, they have a long way to go before they achieve for machinists and miners the standards set by good stables for hunters and steeple-

chasers.

F.L.

C.