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.