The changing world, and lectures to theosophical students.: Fifteen lectures delivered in London during May, June, and July, 1909 — John Shaqi
The changing world, and lectures to theosophical students.: Fifteen lectures delivered in London during May, June, and July, 1909Besant, Annie
Religion
The changing world, and lectures to theosophical students.: Fifteen lectures delivered in London during May, June, and July, 1909
Besant, Annie
Theosophy; Theosophy -- Study and teaching
even within the limits of a trade, sometimes things are marvellously
stupid. Let me give you one example. Melbourne is a large city, and
occasionally it has very hot weather. The trades unions there have made
a law that milk shall not be delivered more than once a day on Sunday;
the poor man wants his holiday, and it is very selfish of you if you
want to make him work on Sunday, so that milk may only be delivered in
the morning. Now the difficulty is that the cows have not yet come into
the trades unions; they do not realise that on Sunday they are only to
give milk once a day and not twice. Without the slightest regard for the
beauty of social arrangements, they wilfully persist in giving milk in
the afternoon as well as in the morning. But the unfortunate milkman must
not sell it, because if he did he would be turned out of his trade union,
and that would mean destruction. So he has to keep it; and if the weather
is hot it is not quite so good in the morning, in spite of the boracic
acid, as it was the night before. So he mixes up the fresh milk of the
morning and the stale milk of the night before, and sells it all as
fresh milk: and though you may not discover it in the milk-can, the baby
discovers it in the milk-bottle, and the death-rate of the children goes
up in the summer because of this admirable arrangement which has been
made with regard to the distribution of milk. That is not the way that
nations can really be governed; and there are all sorts of restrictions
of that kind which constantly come up against you in the home, and make
you feel that life is not in any sense free. Things of this sort can
only succeed if certain conditions are willingly accepted by all the
people who have to work under them, and not when they are imposed for the
benefit of a particular trade or an unwilling and reluctant population.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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