SOCIAL WELFARE IN NEW ZEALAND
By Hugh H. Lusk. Sturges & Walton Co. 287 pp.
Price $1.50; by mail of The Survey $1.62.
Looking back as an old man upon the record he himself has helped to shape, Hugh H. Lusk, in his Social Welfare in New Zealand, points out the significance, particularly for the United States, of that method of government which he calls State Socialism. Nothing so annoys New Zealanders as the ever-recurring criticism that their experiments have been carried out upon too small a scale and under conditions too unusual to be of value to the great remote countries whose single cities contain more people than the whole dominion of New Zealand. Yet doubters still will question, and standpatters will refuse to be moved, by this account of actual accomplishments. He who is not blind, however, to the evils which have followed private profit in public utilities, and who has seen governments conferring special privileges upon the few at the expense of the many, as he turns here again to New Zealand may well find inspiring faith in the ability of a whole people to legislate toward the common good.
Mr. Lusk shows how in New Zealand, government-built railroads became a necessity in a sparsely settled country where private capital would not venture, and how an extensive scheme of legislation for the benefit of settlers on the land was forced upon a people whose appetite for mutual help grew with what it fed upon. Each piece of legislation had in view no more than the meeting of a definite difficulty as it arose. Yet step by step New Zealanders went on in the same direction, until they had reached the point where, somewhat to their own surprise, they found themselves famous and envied in the world at large. Some of that surprise is due to the fact that politics, even as we know them here, are there recognized to have played an important part in shaping the destinies of those islands. “Dick” Seddon and his followers appreciated to its full, the vote-getting value of land reform, progressive taxation and public improvements. Mr. Lusk makes too little of this significant lesson from New Zealand.
And by one who understands the “States” so well, and who is writing for our encouragement and warning, it is surprising that more emphasis is not placed upon methods of administration. To me, as I came to appreciate the New Zealand civil servant, his integrity, his ability, the esteem with which he is held, it always seemed that in him more than anywhere else was to be found the secret of such success as New Zealand has attained. Turn the present corps out and put in such incompetents and grafters as we have in many of our state departments in America, and the whole New Zealand structure would come tumbling down immediately. Not until law and public opinion make it possible, can we have here such administration of labor laws, for instance, as Edward Tregear has given these many years to New Zealand, and not until then will new labor laws be of much more avail to us than old ones are now.
Mr. Lusk’s moral is, “Go thou and do likewise.” By law prevent the accumulation of inordinate riches and provide for the general diffusion of the sum total of prosperity. But when we find that, putting the best construction upon available data, the definition of a man or woman not in receipt of an income of more than $975, “in New Zealand, practically includes all classes and persons engaged in laboring or mechanical pursuits as well as junior clerks or school teachers,” we wonder, after all, whether New Zealand’s road is the one for others to follow. There is many and many a man and woman in that country to whom $975 a year is undreamed of comfort. If this is all that reform can do under the best of circumstances, is this particular game worth the candle? The New Zealand worker just now is saying rather vociferously that it is not. There lies the real hope for reform, that it does not stop, even though it falters. The final lesson from New Zealand is beyond what we are here told. Surely it is that those who will may preach reform and State Socialism to their hearts’ content, but that the workers of other countries must not imitate the mistakes of their New Zealand brothers, neglecting political and industrial organization and leaving it to others to decide what is the public welfare.
Paul Kennaday.