The Dominion. FRIDAY, APRIL 21, 1911. WORKERS AND THEIR LEADERS.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1107, 21 April 1911, Page 4

The Dominion. FRIDAY, APRIL 21, 1911. WORKERS AND THEIR LEADERS.

What the Melbourne Arpus calls "a strange development, and one by no means to be.admired/' has occurred in the case of Mr. .J. T. Packer, president of the Prahran branch of the Political Labour Council. Mr. Packer's case has attracted great attention in Victoria, and is well worth telling here for the light it throws upon the essential spirit of the leaders of trades unionism in Australasia, and the conflict between that spirit and the general fairness of the average worker. On a Sunday in March last Mr. Packer, at a meeting of the Prahran Brotherhood, seconded a resolution expressed in the following terms: That this meeting expressed itself in favour of the cultivation of amicable relations between employer and employee; the seeking of a pcrlect understanding between each; the cultivation of a healthy and brotherly spirit, which yields the best return possible for the best wages and conditions possible, and seeks not only industrial benefits, but also tho social and moral uplifting of the community. This reasonable and common-sense doctrine, with its suggestion that an employer and his employees might be friends, and its denial of the principle that the first duty of man is to hate, and harass the person who pays his wages, provoked an immediate heresy hunt. On the following day Mr. Skehan, president of the Implement-makers' Union, now on strike, read of Mr. Packer's behaviour with anger and pain, and said "he hoped Mr. Packer would be packed up, labelled 'not wanted', and tipped into the unionist rubbishtin." Nor was the Prahran branch of the Political Labour Council slow to. move against Mr. Packer. At a special meeting it passed, with only four dissentient voices, a motion asking Mr. Packer to resign his office. Mr. Packer complied. Then the Shop-Assistants' Union, which he represented on the Trades Hall Council, callcd upon him, by 41 votes to 11, to resign from his union. This zealous defence of the "unionistic" gospel against the heresy of mutual understanding, friendliness, and good relations between masters and men failed most astonishingly to appeal to the hearts of the workers. As a result the Prahran branch of the Political Labour Council took fright, and so far abandoned its intolerant attitude as to beg Mr. Packer, on Monday of last week, to withdraw his resignation. It passed a resolution requesting him to reconsider his decision, but Mr. Packer, after reading the Council a lesson on tolerance and fair play, declined to take office again. No words are necessary upon the pitiable figure cut by the Council, which had not even the couvagc of its intolerance. But the reason for its repuntence is worthy of notice. The surrender was not due to a. sense of shame, but to alarm at the indignation it had aroused in all quarters. It had discovered, as one speaker at the penitence meeting said, that its action had already lost- the Labour cause thousands of votes. Nobody need be surprised at this, for there is in the average workingman a natural sense of fair play, such as there obviously is not in'the average loaders of the Labour movement. There could be no greater mistake than to suppose that the principles of the Labour agitators, as revealed in the union congresses, are shared by the workers whom they so badly represent. The ca.use of "the workers"—we use the phrase, but we dislike its suggestion that they only are workers who work with their hands at certain trades—is One that lends itself very readily to exploitation by the Socialist and the adventurer. The Labour leaders and the Labour press will of course say that those- who object to the methods of the Labour bosses arc enemies of tho workingman. The truth is, of course, that the working-man has no greater enemy than the agitator who lives upon him. In time the trade unionists will realise, as the Packer case shows that they have the capacity for realising, that they must get rid of the undesirable demagogues who, by fluency, violence, and cunning, have in Australasia captured the direction of union affairs. We have always expressed our belief in the goodness' of the true trade-union principle; nearly everybody approves it, and whole classes act upon it in one way or the other. But y.hile the original purpose of unionism is so wildly perverted, and the workers' causc left in the hands of reckless and tyrannical mischiefmakers, the workers cannot securc that frank sympathy from the community that is in the long run essential to their real welfare.