The Dominion. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER, 30, 1907. A WORD TO LABOUR.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 4, 30 September 1907, Page 4

The Dominion. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER, 30, 1907. A WORD TO LABOUR.

Tiie arrival in this country of Mr. Ben. Tillett, to he followed by a visit from Mr. Iveir Hardie, lias come at a time when the Labour organisations, profiting by the prominence given to their ambitions by various events in the past year, are adopting a very militant attitude. The Trades and Labour Councils have been exhausting the resources of rhetoric in their condemnation of the proposed alterations in the Arbitration Act, labour leaders have been seeking to convict the Government of bitter enmity towards the workers, and labour voices everywhere are indignantly condemning the suspension of a civil servant who has taken a_ public part in political agitation, in short, there is sweeping through the ranks of organised labour a wave of political activity which calls for attention. What is it that Labour demands ? What is the legislative programme that lias provoked all this activity, and the legislative reforms necessary to ■ make the Labour leaders contented? Discontent cannot exist without causes, and the campaign of discontent has now been carried so far that those causes must be defined by the promoters of the agitation. Unfortunately for the hopes of helpful argument, defmiteness is a most difficult thing to obtain from the Trades Councils and the individual Labour leaders at the present time. At Auckland on Friday Mr. Ben. Tillett pronounced his crced in these familiar and unfruitful terms:—

"Bo' long as the condition of society roigned which enabled those who worked tho hardest to live in the poorest houses and dress in tho poorest clothes and to eat> tlie poorest food, and generally to live the poorest lives, while those who did no social productive work wore enabled to enjoy all tho pleasures and luxuries of wealth, tho working classes would have to turn their attention to solid genuine reform. . . Tho wharf labourers nmst consider that they were human beings, and as human beings and workers they wero entitled to tho best, and only the best, that could be produced in the country. He urged then:', to fight to seeuro largor representation 011 all public bodies and on all public institutions."

?or all its vagueness, this is as clear and precise as the arguments of our own Labour leaders' to-day, and since Mr. Tillett. -.i"as using just those unproductive generalities many years ago, it is little to the credit of our Labour leaders' inventiveness that after all this time they -'liould still be talking of " solid genuine reform " without drafting, if not the. details, yet at any rate tlie broad lines of the legislation which they require. Our own conviction, and the conviction of all people whose political affections are not immoderately biassed in any direction, is that the conditions at which the Socialists are railing are. rooted, not in legislation., but deep down in human nature, 'arid that any violent attempt to revolutionise those conditions will fail by its own disastrous results. Ton cannot grqw figs. I'rpm thistles, and you cannot erect a socialist Utopia, upon such changeful and uncontrollable sands as imperfect, human nature. Every political party in the state-—every ordinary man, indeed—desires to liberate the worker from any conditions that make for hardship and unhappiness, and we, for our part, will welcome any improvement in the workers' condition that can be effected upon a sound and enduring basis. The difficulties of the Labour party are largely of their own making. So long asthey deal-only in vague generalities, they are forcing hard realities into conflict with their impossible ideals. The best service which the Labour leaders can do their clients is the formulation of a concrete programme that can be discussed upon its practical merits. Organised Labour itself would laugh at the idea of electing, to Parliament a candidate who would say nothing excepting that he aimed at making a Heaven upon Earth. And, as a candidate':-' business is to define his plan for securing his end, so the business of the Legislature is the enactment of explicit rules and regulations for Society. What rules and regulations does organised Labour desire ?