NOTES OF THE DAY.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1689, 4 March 1913, Page 4

NOTES OF THE DAY.

The Now York strikers who wrecked the office of the Jewish newspaper Forward, and forced its to lly for their lives, all because an editorial had advised that in settling tho strike the employers should not recognise the union, acted strictly according to the principles of militant trade unionism. During our own tramways strike there wero throats against The Dominion; we forget exactly what the orators of that day actually said was going to happen to us, but as their languago was blood-curdling, it must have been something that would have staggered humanity and marked an opoch and carved a deep notch and made soino day a date to be recorded in trado union calendars in solemnly largo type. For the militant trado unionist leader cannot enduro that freedom of speech shall be permitted to anybody but himself: to permit it would bo a betrayal of the principles of liberty. Tho New York Forward has some excuse for not looking upon tho striking garment workers with a fridndly eye, because it had a strike of its own staff to worry it last month. •' The staffs of the tour Jewish newspapers, the Wahre.it, Forward., Jewish Mornintf Journal, and Jewish Daily News,' are combined in a Newspaper Writers' Union, and on January 17 they went on strike and declared that they would not return, to work until their union was rccogniscd and their demands granted. ■ Their demands included a five-hour working day, with .fivo .dollars. extra for every item .of. any kind written outside, working hours, and preference i,o unionists. These were serious enough demands from the proprietors' point of view, but still more serious was the demand that in each office there should be a "chapel foreman" to assist the literary stiff against the editors who "use tho blue pencil until their fingers grow callous and their hearts hardened." In an editorial upon this quaint 'Btrike the Now York Post expended some excellent satire on tho theme that tho strikers Lad "merely struck another blow in the age-long battle for liberty." It suggested ironically that some people might raise "the worn-out cry" that complete subjection to a union is not liberty, and it called up a vision of "the reformed and regenerated newspaper office," in which unionist writers would write what they- liked without fear of "the blue pencil," and draw any wages they chose. * It will be a hap'py time, for 'then no newspaper will be allowed to criticise a member of a'union, and no one will bo ablo to run for office without first taking out a union ticket. In point of fact a New York newspaper proprietor'has already had to go hat in hand to a union for permission to discharge a reporter, and a Boston editor had to reinstate an unreliable member of tho staff beoauso if he had not done so there would have been a strike.' But it is all in the interests of Liberty, which, as everyone knows, means liberty for nobody but trade unionists.

The day upon which benefits under the National Insurance Act began to be paya-blo coincided with • Mr. Lloyd-George's fiftieth birthday. Providenoe, which may have been nudged last year, doubtless foresaw that there would be a dinner, at which Mr. Lloyd-George could forco his best vituperative vein. And ho did; and much stress was laid by tho Radical journals upon "the double event" and its significance. It was such a mighty triumph- over "the doctors." But Providence had not been nudged as thoroughly and watchfully as it might have been,.and so arranged an unpleasant sceno of its own. 'Within a few days an inquest was held over the body of a mail named Townsend, who had died of strangulated hernia. He consulted one of Mr. Lloyd-George's doctors, but was -not examined, being merely given a powder which might hav'o been useful if ho had only been suffering from dyspepsia. He died, and it was shown that if he had been subjected to a simple enough operation promptly his death could easily have been prevented. Tho following two questions and answers from the examination of the doctor who made the autopsy arc eloquent enough: "So if this man had gone to the hospital be would have been alive now?" "Probably." "As it is, be went to his National Insurance Act doctor, and lie is now deacl?" "Yes." This case docs not, of course, furnish an argument against the Act. But it, certainly is a vor.v strong commentary upon the haste with which Mrt. Lloyd-George, stronger in his bittei v anxiety to beat tho Medical Association for purely political purposes than in his concern for tho safety and soundnoss of tho scheme, rushed the Act into operation. The fruit of' it is rather bitterer than the "rare and refreshing" fruit promised by the Chancellor to Townsend and the rest of tho public.

Can one find a justification for a Minister (especially a Prime Minister) who says of a certain proposal that it will bring disaster and de-

gradation, that ho will not make it a party issue, and will personally vote against it, but that if the Houso agrees to it ho will adopt it and put tho Government's woight behind it 7 That, it will bo rememberedj was Mr. Asquitii's position on woman's suffrage when an amendment conferring votes on women was announced on the Franchise Bill. His views on the subject are well known, and ho has often denounced woman's suffrage in stronger terms than as "a mistakeof a very disastrous kind," and an innovation "fraught with the gravest possibilities to the future (jood government of tho country." The Tablet has some piercing comments upon Mr. Asquitii's readiness, if outvoted, to Carry out the policy he had conscientiously condemned as fatal to the nation's best interests^ In otter words (it says) it may be said of Mr. Asquith that in a good cause ho is equal to any sacrifice—that is not inconvenient. Tlio driver of the political coach 6ccs ahead a dividing of the'waysj ho believes that one road leads to safety, and tho other to disaster, and yet that is the moment, when tho fateful choice has to bo made, that he chooses to (ling tho reins on tho horses' necks, and leaves them to go thundering oil and to turn which way they will. But there is a stranger tiling yet. If the horses, left to themselves, chooso the road which leads to ruin, then it is understood that tho driver will gather up the Mills again, end, carefully guarding tho coach from accident by tho way, will himself drive it to its foreseen destination. It is officially announced that the Prime Minister will go the full length of voting for his convictions, .but on tho understanding that ho is 111 no case to bD expected to resign for them. We shall not »o surprised if, ill tho long run, this cynical view of tho responsibilities and obligations of public life does not meet with general condemnation—a condemnation which surely may be independent of any views one may have formed as to the merits of tho general question of women's suffrage.

To do. Mr. Asquitii justioo hp can reply that if he were to resign on the adoption of woman's suffrage by the House he mirfit be succeeded by a Government lcs3 scrupulous about convictions, bo that nothing would be gained, while, from his point of view, much would bo lost.