AUSTRALIA SELF-CONTAINED. 
thus are good results achieved. Do not we get better results in dealing 
with our children by becoming mates with them, co-operating with 
them, rather than by ruling with a rod of iron? Cannot Australians 
co-operate as readily at home as in France? 
Australia imagines she is ahead in industrial conditions, but this 
is sadly not so. She leads in industrial legislation, which has tended 
to rather intensify past bitterness, because legislation has regarded 
wages as the end, and not the means thereto, just as we and the whole 
world, too, in the past, have regarded money as the end, not the means. 
We stand behind the Mother Country in thought and deed. What 
are they doing in Great Britain? As a first instalment, they are start- 
ing to build 200,000 new houses for workers; they: nationalized the milk 
supply to protect the people’s health; and instituted a complete re- 
organization of the education system. They are devoting some of the 
best brains of the country towards meeting the conditions of the post-war 
period. 
What does man want? Firstly, health; secondly, security of employ- 
ment, providing he carries out a decent job to the best of his ability; 
thirdly, insurance against being dragged down to the depths financially, 
if, unfortunately, he should be sick and unable to work; fourthly, 
decent housing conditions; fifthly, a fair margin between the cost of 
living and his income; sixthly, good education and a chance in life 
for his children; and, seventhly, reasonable civic and social rights—all 
of which, summed up, imply a minimum amount of happiness. 
How shall we endeavour to attain to this position? The answer is 
by co-operation in all matters—by employers taking a keen interest in 
the lives of all their employees—by developing a spirit of civic and 
industrial citizenship, so that a man will guard his job just as he would 
a public garden running down the centre of a street; by inaugurating 
co-operative councils, which, with the assistance of the employers, will 
reduce cost of living to a minimum, and by means of which education 
in general economics will gradually percolate through the whole com- 
munity to its lasting good. 
If ignorance on both sides as to the attitude of mind of the other 
side can be eliminated; if we can get together and thereby eliminate 
the pitiful feeling of distrust and growing hatred that exists at present, 
there is some hope; but, without it, none at all. 
We shall have to minimize the number of non-producers in the 
community. We must somehow eliminate the tremendous wastage, both 
of labour and material, involved in present methods of distribution, 
thereby materially reducing the cost of living. This must be done by 
intelligent co-operation, in which all the employees, both mental and 
manual workers, shall have a large, if not a controlling, interest. 
The following are a few examples of what is being done in Great 
Britain, America, and, to a limited extent, here to solve this problem :— 
A separate department of the organization is formed in charge of 
an industrialist, which is just as distinctive as the accounting or 
engineering department. 
223 
