The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, February 3, 1919, Page 10

o i Al et Sucéessful Ploneermg With State Aid By Assuming Some of the Risks and Eliminating Exploitation, New Zealand Has Removed the Great Hardships of New Land Farming The eighth of a series of 10 articles by Mr. Mills, well-known writer and lecturer, author of DEMOCRACY OR DESPOTISM, on Zealand Before the War.” BY WALTER THOMAS MILLS out from previous positions of advantage in industry, in com- merce, or in the state. The typical pioneer in all the past has been personally penniless and hence without power in commerce and without influence in the state. He has usually been gifted with unusual foresight and great per- sonal courage, and hence has been the first to ad- venture in the really great adventures. This has been true of inventors, of discoverers and of the creators of new forms of industrial and commercial activities and of all progressive under- takings on behalf of the governments. It has been rare indeed that those who have ldid foundations for the great progressive movements of the world have ever witnessed the days of trxumph and more rare still have they ever shared in the benefits of these achievements. THE AMERICAN PATHFINDERS The history of the American pioneer through 400 years has been a history of dauntless courage, of great personal sacrifices and of the building up of great interests, from the benefits of which, as a rule, the real builders have been themselves ex- _ cluded. ‘It is a rare thing to be able to find any com- munity in the United States in which, 50 years after its settlement, it will be found to be true that those who broke the first paths, built the first cabins, cleared the first fields and made life pos- sible in the new district, have become the final - beneficiaries of these early services.: English settlers had been in this country 200 years before there was any scheme of homestead settlements and in most instances even then the homesteaders, under the law, struggled on in great poverty with the scanti- est possible equipment and with the most meager income, until finally, as the victims of some slight misfortune, foreclosure and evic- tion robbed them of the homes which they had undertaken to build with stout hearts, and of which they were finally compelled to make a heart-breaking surrender. NEW ZEALAND LED THE WAY New Zealand wds among the very first of all the countries where the nation itself assumed the re- sponsxbxhty for the hazards and difficulties in- volved in pioneer settlements. Under -this scheme of organized pioneering on the part of the state, employment was first fur- “Farmers delivering milk to a co-operative creamery in New Zealand. One of the great difficulties in the pioneer- stage of farming is the market and, as Mr. Mills points out in the accompanying article, New Zealand aids the pioneer - in this problem by government marketing activity and encouraging co-opera-. i tion. In this country the pioneer has had to shift for lumself and ] the pereentage of failures has been very large. - “New IONEERS have rarely sf.arted' nished to all of the unemployed, then opportunities for land settlement with sufficient advances pro- vided by the government to make it possible for the settlers, usually co-operating with each other, to clear and build and plant and provide for them- selves the stock and tools sufficient to make the new home an entirely self-supporting enterprise. In these settlements the workers were pmd wages or were granted loans to the value of improve- ments made or.stock and equipments purchased, until such a self-supporting condition of each settler had been firmly established. — I visited one such village community where " 22 men had been taken from the street, un- employed and penniless, had been given em- ployment in railway construction, had been sold small farms, had been paid wages while bring- ing these farms into a self-supporting condition - and then through a long series of years with interest at 3 per cent and small annual pay- ments on the principal they had paid out. The settlement was over 20 years old, every farm had been paid for, there had not been one fail-- ure, foreclosure or eviction, and of the 22 orig- - inal settlers, 18 of them were still on the ground, two had died, one had sold out his hold- : ings to return to the mother country, the fourth had sold, but I was not able to learn what had become of him. In every instance there were modern houses, well-kept orchards, “beautiful New Zealand, as Mr. Mills describes in the accompanying article, has long done for the ordinary citizen what we would now have to do to make the placing of soldiers on new land suc- cessful. These steps are too “rad- ical,” however, for the interest-con- trolled government at Washington, and consequently the official “land for the soldiers” cry is so much hot air. The politicians have no intention of im- proving general farm conditions or of otherwise making pioneering a fairly " safe undertaking. Many of our soldiers who have been farmers will refuse to go back to the farm because of the conditions of farming; very few will accept the half-way plans for pioneer- ing our government will offer, if in truth it finally offers any at all. yards, and in every way it was one of the finest rural village communities that I have " ever visited. The full significance of this fact can only be realized when we remember that every person in this instance was an unemployed, penniless street- corner, soup-kitchen subject of the king when this opportunity was offer- ed him. : But this pioneering by the state goes far- ther. It builds the roads, builds the bridges, builds - the railways, builds the schools. In many instances it builds the local ' creameries and organizes and man- ages ‘the foreign mar- ket through which the settlers dispose of their. products. THE COURT OF ARBITRATION For 250 years or- ganizations of employ- ers have been strug-. gling with the labor -problem and for the same. period organiza- have been struggling with the same problem. They have frequently : ?AGETIN tions of workingmen’ conferred with each_ other, but almost always as mutual enemi_es and in the time of industrial conflict. - Workingmen have been imprisoned, transported, hanged under the forms of law,.and brutally murdered, some- times even burned at the stake, in the midst of in- v Employers who have sought dustrial disaster. Government planted and owned pine plantation in Australia. These forests, -planted years ago on unoccupied land, are now a source of big revenue to the state. earnestly for some practicable solution of the real problems usually have been classed by labor with its worst enemies and have been regarded as rene- gades by other employers. Labor commissions have been appointed to in- vestigate and to make reports on labor wars to the governments of many countries. The hours of la- bor have been established by law. Factory legis- lation and sanitary rules and safeguards for shops, factories and mines have been enacted. New Zealand was the first country in the world to lead in the effort to actually adjudi- cate industrial disputes by a government au- thority. Under this adventure for the 10 years during which the Labor party was in control there was not one strike in New Zealand and all industrial and commercial interests pros- pered as never before and never since. But with the labor government in control the trade unionists selected one judge, the employers’ or- ' ganizations-another and the government, which was a labor government, named the presiding judge, and so long as this was the case there was industrial peace and, by a series of arbi- tration court proceedings, the demands of la- bor were almost always given the effect of law. - When the reactionaries recaptured the govern- ment, the government still appointed the presiding judge. It appointed the chief attorney of the em- ployers’ association to that post and then a series: of two to one decisions.were given the other way until New Zealand ceased to be a country of no strikes and became a country of more strikes in proportlon to its population than any other country in the world. BETTER THAN ARBITRATION But the labor government rendered a further service in the matter of governmental pioneering. More powerful than the arbitration court was the policy of the government to provide in public en- terprises employment, with an eight-hour day and with standard wages for all the unemployed. So far as this policy has been carried out the govern- ment has been able to enforce an eight-hour day by offering employment to all comers on an eight- hour schedule and to enforce standard wages by paying standard wages to all comers. In fact, it has demonstrated that the most effective method of regulatlng pnvate enterprises in manufactunng and in commerce is not that of forbidding the pri- vate owners to do certain things which ought not to be done. It has been found more effective for the government itself to do the things which ought to be done. Then private enterprises must follow suit or go into bankruptcy as a result. In all these matters it is seen that the gov- ernment itself has assumed the risks and losses and has largely ehminated the hard- ships of the pioneer.: * (The ‘subject of the next article in tlns series will be “The Natlon as a Housekeeper ") - F—iat ol g iy