The Times. Published on Tuesday and Friday Afternoons. FRIDAY, AUGUST 5, 1921. ONE BIG UNION.

Franklin Times, Volume 9, Issue 656, 5 August 1921, Page 4

The Times. Published on Tuesday and Friday Afternoons.

FRIDAY, AUGUST 5, 1921. ONE BIG UNION.

“We nothing extenuate, nor aught set down in malice.”

The Thorndon branch of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants has passed a resolution in favour of linking up all the branches of Civil Servants throughout the Dominion in order to combat any effort to reduce the standard of living. This is indicative of a movement now being prosecuted in other branches of the public service to the same end, and it lends point to some remarks made by Mr Leadley last week at the. Dominion Conference of the New Zealand Farmers’ Union when he referred to the growing strength of the Civil Servants, and in effect expressed the view that they would eventually become the masters of the public in whose pay they are. The public are of opinion that the lot of Civil Servants is by no means , unpleasant ; that they enjoy many advantages in which their fellows in private employ cannot participate, whilst their increased pay during the past eight years has been fairly substantial, the total salaries having doubled, whilst the personnel has risen from 5372 to 7660. In an address at Dunedin last week the General Secretary of the Post and Telegraph Officers’ Association intimated that his executive had approached, the three? branches of the Railway Servants, and if the overtures were favourably received then it was proposed to combine with other organisations, and thus the whole of the Civil Service would be organised in one big union. It is also well to remember , that one branch of the Railwaymen is affiliated with the Alliance of Labour, and thus the significance and magnitude of the proposal becomes apparent. It is not improbable that the programme will have the immediate and salutary effect of increasing public interest, in the growing power of the Civil Service, for the object of such an organisation as that contemplated is obviously to enforce its dictum upon the country; but its promotors would do well to study the lessons of history. Only recently the Triple Alliance in Britain went to pieces. In theory it should have been able to enforce its demands, but it fell apart when the testing time came. On the day when any section of ■ the people can by force coerce the whole of the people and wrest power from constituted authority, the first step is taken on the road, to revolution. Every great struggle for human betterment must have behind it the powerful force of public opinion, and the present-day tendency to ignore this and even to injure the public is the sure way to ultimate, if not immediate, disaster. It is interesting. to recall the formation and •the fate of a former great organisation of the days of Robert Owen. The/ Grand National Consolidated Trades Union was formed in 1834. Within a few weeks it numbered over half a million members, but its end came suddenly. In Owen’s opinion this great organisation was to bring great changes, which would, come suddenly upon society “like a thief in the night.” History shows that large organisations can .more easily be built on paper than in actual fact If the leaders of to-day were more conversant with the failures of the past and understood the causes of those failures, it is probable that the workers would be saved from wearisome journeys in blind alleys.