THE FEDERATION PANIC.

Dominion, Volume 7, Issue 1902, 10 November 1913, Page 8

THE FEDERATION PANIC.

AN OUTSPOKEN CRITIC.

MR M. I REARDON HITS OUT;

GENERALSTRtKE CONDEMNED

"Put a fool on a horso and ho will ride to the devil!" That seems to be about the position of those who are controlling the destinies of tho Federation of Labour at tho present moment if they persist in their endeavouring to call a general strike.ln those words Mr. M. J. Reardoii, a member of the District .Labour Council, and secretary of tho General Labourers' and other unions, summed up his impressions of the latest development in Federation policy. "Having got the waterside workers into the mire," he continued, "the Federation leaders seem sow particularly anxious to drag others into the sums difficulty. So far as the general labourers go, I Wafit to make it perfectly clear to them that they should, at all hazards, completely ignore 'these adventurers, i We havo just, signed up an agreement with the Wellington City Council, and those employed by that body should bo men enough to' stick to their agreement. If those employed in connection with the sanitary works and at the destructor take the slightest notice of any outside jnterferenco such a.s this is, they will be not only enemies to tho Labour movement, but to their wives and childten and to the wives and children, of the whole working-class population of tho city. "Do these unscrupulous people realise," continued Mr. Reardon, "that if thoy interfere with the men who are engaged in seeing to the cleanliness of the city, they lay the children, of the workers open to some frightful pestilence, more virulent than that through which the northern part of this island has recently passed? Do they realise that iii such an event those who art going U> suffer first are the working class population in the congested areas of tho city? If they do not realise their responsibilities, then I do mine, and. I say unhesitatingly that any general labourer so employed, who takes tho slightest notice of any call from any outside person ■to stop work, deserves to be drummed out ol the- city."

"In any case," Mr. Reardoii went on to I'oniarJs, "in their calm and dispassionate moments, the members of tho General Labourers' Union and of other anions in tho Dominion, have voted against the policy of the Federation of Labour. Therefore, in ail hour of panic and passion, it is the duty of every officer of such an organisation to sb to it that members are not em- 1 broiled in & fight about which thoy were never consulted, and'in which they have not tho slightest hope of rendering any pwsible service.

"Tho Federation has never yet been abb? to show, in all its 'propaganda' work, that the genera! "Strike lias ever been successful in any country or -under any circumstances. Writers of standins,, in the Labour movement have shown over and over again that so soon as a general strike is called, then tho publie, in self-protection, has to set out to defeat the strikers."-