Combines

The Reign Of The

New Social-Service Order May Help Copra Industry

SINCERE sympathy will be extended to coconut planters who have been so badly hit by the war that they find it difficult to keep going.

Before the war, they were crippled by the clandestine machinations of Big Business combines which, acknowledging no government control, constituted a real obstacle to the prosperity of Euro pean and native in the South Seas. With dismay and utter helplessness, they watched the profits which belonged to them disappear into the capacious maws of Big Business. They realised that the close of the war might bring normal trade again, but it offered no respite from the operations of the unscrupulous combine.

Like the gleam of a planet in a dark night, there now has appeared a ray of hope and confidence, voiced in a broad cast message by Professor W. K. Han cock, of Birmingham. He stated that the war had brought into play new fac tors which were destined to remodel society and restore equilibrium in the industrial and social order. In the new world, the injustice countenanced and perpetuated by Big Business would no longer be tolerated.

“Mr. Chamberlain’s resignation,” he said, “was symbolic, and marked the end of the Age of the Business Man.”

With confident emphasis, Professor Hancock asserted that mankind was at the dawn of a new epoch, when big busi ness would be the servant of the state and not dominate its politics. Mr.

Chamberlain had to slip down, because he was regarded as a business man, with whom the new forces directing Britain and its war effort could not co-operate.

Wedded to the past, he refused to plan for the future; but his successors would spp the old order pass into the new, using the old as an instrument.

With a daring illustration from the German techniaue. Professor Hancock said that the Nazis started by burning down the Reichstag, and post-war recon struction will open operations by Puttmg an end to the hoarv institutions which challenge social justice.

Among the anachronisms doomed for destruction will be, in all likelihood such organisations as Ltd. Chang ing times demand changing conditions, pnd there is now every indication that, Pftpv tu e war. the business man will not dominate politics as he has done for the lOO vears. The new age is embark ing on an era of a social-service state in which big business undertakings will V,p brought more under social control.

The hip- business man will not disappear, hnt he will assume a new role in society.

In his interesting Professor Hancock opened up a new vista for a distracted world. Of course everything abends upon the issue of the war.

Should the Oght go against the Ames, evervthing will be lost; but, in spite of disappointments, defeats and disasters, Hancock was confident of vic tory. With the establishment of the reign of freedom and social Inlands planters mav hope to be rehabil fated in remunerative, tranquil condi tions. without the overshadowing men ace of the Combines. —M.F.