Page:The humanizing of commerce and industry, the Joseph Fisher lecture in commerce, delivered in Adelaide, 9th May, 1919.pdf/20

 Are we prepared to accept this Gospel of Happiness as a national ideal? If we are we shall have to evolve practical means for safeguarding the health of every unit in the community and securing to all conditions that will permit them to live a life of happiness, while at the same time giving them absolute freedom as individuals to go on and develop to the highest of their capacity, and to secure as much more happiness and achievement as their self-expression requires.

I appreciate that if we attempted to instil some ideal like this into our children to-day we would be disconcerted by the comment immediately made that we were not living up to it; that we permitted sickness and misery, and that we were callous as to whether some sections of the community lived or died. I venture, however, to suggest to the educationists that in the reconstruction of education in the future national ideals should find a foremost place.

To attain happiness, even if a man have good health and a good education, it is necessary for him to have the right to live in a good home. In the past we have left the matter of housing to the individual—with disastrous results. We have slums, tenements, overcrowded and insanitary homes, and exorbitant rents, resulting in the loss of health and happiness. Such conditions destroy individual efficiency. The present laws governing housing are absolutely inadequate, and the sooner we follow Great Britain's example and provide suitable homes for all, the better.

But if we are to have a huge housing campaign we must organize to carry out the job in the same way as a company would commence a campaign for the construction of big works. It is conceivable that we in Australia, having decided to build, say, fifty thousand houses, would take stock of the materials available in our own country; we would make enquiry as to the labour available; as it would be one big job we would proceed, after the preparation of plans, to prepare our timbers and other building materials in a large organized way. There would be no need for us to follow the methods of to-day. In some cities in Australia you can see bricks being carted from a brickyard in the north to a building site in the south, while at the same time bricks from a brickyard in the south are being carted to a site in the north; you can see labour residing in one suburb hurrying away to a distant suburb to work on a building, and meeting on the journey a stream of similar