RHETORIC AND FACTS.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1565, 8 October 1912, Page 4

RHETORIC AND FACTS.

The Federation of Labour will not road with much pleasure of the reone of the strike "heroes" who went to gaol rather than undertake to observe the, law to the extent of leaving respectable workmen alone. It will not meet him with .a band and a "joy" procession; although it ought to, for this man who has returned to common sense has been, according to the Federation orators, a "victim'' of "capitalistic tyranny" and what not. But the Federation is more likely to be displeased, because the release of this man, and the amusingly simple way in which he opened the gaol door (by merely providing a guarantee to behave himself), will be cold water on the red-hot those who have represented the imprisoned strikers as "martyrs." »It is not much of a martyrdom that you ean end at any moment at no cost. The Federation people, we notice, have begun to think that they can, even now, misrepresent the origin of the strike. A Christchurch telegram in yesterday's issue reported that at a meeting of sympathisers with the strike the Waihi disturbers of the peace wore congratulated on their "magrificent display of solidarity in the h>ht against the attempt of the Gold Kings to reintroduce the murdering process known as the competitive) contracts system." No wonder the Federationists think they can "knock out" the public when they bo obviously regard the public as a pack of simpletons able at a moment's notice to forget the dominant fact of the whole affair. Is there in the whole Dominion anybody who docs not know that the fight is a fight, not against "murdering gold-kings," whatever they may be, but a fight against the right of engine-drivers to exist outside the Federation of Labour ?