*THE
WORKER*
BRISBANE APRIL 13, 1895.
The
Editorial Mill.
Our
Motto: “Socialism in our time.”
Government
that are in any sense sincerely progressive are beginning to
recognise that their first duty is to see that work is found for the
people whose destiny they are called to watch over. This duty has
been forced on them through that wild booming and bursting of
speculative private industry which is the principal cause of
depression and poverty amongst the people. But no sensible person for
a moment would ever dream of classing the present Government of
Queensland amongst the sincerely progressive. The insincerity of the
rulers of Queensland has and is becoming more notorious than ever.
The cardinal points of their policy has always been to gull the
people in the interests of boodlers who are after the spoil, and as
the Brisbane TELEGRAPH says; “If in these countries and in these
times it were not a common thing to see examples of public corruption
and of private fraud, the community would be astonished at what is
now being done about sugar machinery.”
*
* *
Our
Civilisation.
It
is often proclaimed that the number of a people's wants is a measure
of their degree of civilisation. Thus, say economists, the savage
wants only a gunyah and a feed, whereas the European wants his
mental, aesthetic, and moral wants supplied. The former cares only
for the material wants, assimilation and reproduction. Now the
statement needs slight alteration to be correct. Civilisation is
measured, not by the number of its wants only, but by the character
of these wants.
*
* *
Can
our boasted nineteenth century civilisation claim so much superiority
over the savage? A great majority of our people are as purely
material in their wants as he. Professor Huxley quotes one of
Goethe's epigrams as summing up the whole of life’s story: “Why
so bustle the people, and cry? To get food, to begot children, and
feed them as best they can. Further attaineth no man, put himself
however he will.”
*
* *
If
this be so, the savage is the wiser, for he does not bustle himself
more than necessary. Yes, we most of us, bustle ourselves alone for
these. “Three-fourths of the demands existing in the world are
romantic, and three-fourths of its luxuries, as far as the health and
happiness of those who revel in them are concerned, would be better
flung away.”
*
* *
How
much human energy is wasted on vicious luxuries? An ostentatious
vulgarian's daughter wear's a dress costing £1000
at a ball. Where is the gain? In aesthetic beauty! No, for it is
often an aesthetic horror noticeable only for its costliness. It
breeds vanity in the wearer and envy in the poorer girls whose glory
is extinguished. True, it employs milliners, but their labour would
have been better expended on ragged children, and instead of envy and
vanity, decency and benevolence would blossom. Barouches,flunkies,
lackeys, dress circle seats, first-class railway carriages, and
inlaid steamer saloons – if these are signs of true civilisation we
are civilised indeed.
*
* *
The
time spent in producing these luxuries were better employed in
educating the people into nobler “wants.” Instead of working ten
hours daily to produce luxuries, cut down working hours and spend the
saved time in creating and satisfying mental wants which are cheapest
and noblest. “Man doth not live by bread alone.” Of course, food
and physical wants are the first necessaries of existence, but
luxuries are not.
*
* *
How
are we to keep down this excessive gratification of fictitious and
injurious wants? By heavily taxing all such, and by morally
discouraging them and encouraging (by providing the requisite means)
nobler tastes to take their place. Let us cease from gratifying the
vanity of Moneybags in his ostentatious display of his wealth, by
refusing to gape open-mouthed after him; choosing rather to honour
the simple tastes and useful life of the intellectual workman and the
scientist.
ADDIEL
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