MANUAL & MENTAL LABOUR.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1855, 15 September 1913, Page 11

MANUAL & MENTAL LABOUR.

' "Maniual and Mental Labour" was tho text of Mr. Fraser. the principal speaker on Saturday night at an openair meeting held in Green Street, Newtown, by tne Wellington branch of the Social Democratio Party. When Mr. G. Hutchison, secretary of the branch, mounted the box to introduce Jlr. Fras-sr, the "mass" meeting consisted of fivo persons, (including the speakers and the reporter, but tho speakers proceeded until Mrs. Donaldson had quite a' large audience of thirty or forty people in front of her. Mr. Fraser commenced by telling his hearers that Labour in Now Zealand was at its most oritical period, as tho Arbitration Bill, just introduced, threatened Organised Labour and reduced the elementary rights of citizenship to an absolute farce. "It is_ a fallacy," said Mr. Fraser, "to divide Labour into two classes—manual and mental," arguing that oven the turning of a sod required a mental as well as a manual effort. '"What Labour has produced, Labour should enjoy," was his next axiom, but, ho added, instead of that tho idle rich robbed the workers of tho wealth ,they. produced. "There is no' man good euough," said Mr. Eraser, "to ue master over the destiny of any other man or wonmi." Mr. Fraser proceeded to refer at somo length td capitalists, and to what ho termed "white slavery" in' the dairying industry. In conclusion he claimed that the Social Democratic Party held the key to the solution, and could 'bring salvation to the working man.