REAPING THE HARVEST.

Press, Volume XLIX, Issue 14832, 25 November 1913, Page 6

REAPING THE HARVEST.

Tho most lamentable feature of the present industrial crisis is the fact that there is absolutely no reason for it, except that a number of irresponsible and interested agitators have found ready to hand the materials for a class war which they have been able to fan into flame. None of the men who have gone out on strike—with the single exception of the Wellington shipwrights—allege any grievances against the employers in the matter of pay or conditions of work. For nearly twenty years the Arbitration Act has been in force and it has been steadily worked to secure better terms for the men; in no single instance has it been invoked by the employers to secure a redaction in wages. But for many years past a isedulous attempt has been made by socalled Labour or their own party en4s to stir up class bitterness. The owners of land and the employers of labour havo been persistently reviled and represented as the foes of

"the workers," until at last a section of the community have come to believe these infamous misrepresentations, with the result that when the emissaries of the American I.W.W. came to Kew Zealand they found the ground had been well prepared for them. In July last they came out with their "preamble," in which they laid down their diabolical doctrine —"The working-class " and the employing class have nothing

in common. . . Between these two "classes a struggle must go on, until " the workers of the world organise as "a class, take possession of the earth, "and the machinery of production, " and abolish the wage system." This is the climax to which the politicians who have been trading on class feeling and stirring up class bitterness for years have brought the country, which ought to be happy, contented, and prosperous. That some of them are now alarmed at the spirit of lawlessness which they have helped to unchain we can readily believe. Unfortunately their repentance was a little too late, especially as oven now they dare not tell the extremists that they are wrong, and, while secretly hoping that the party of law and order will ultimately triumph, they are sedulously refraining from giving that party any practical assistance.