Monday, 10 November 2014

The Editorial Mill April 13, 1895.

*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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