DRIFTING ON THE ROCKS.

Greymouth Evening Star, Volume XXXI, 2 October 1901, Page 4

DRIFTING ON THE ROCKS.

“ They should go one step further and take over the whole blooming show and run it themselves," so said Mr P. Hutson, an erstwhile Government supporter at an employers’ meeting hold at Wellington last week, in criticising the action of the Government with reference to labor matters. Mr Hutson went on to speak of the cooperative system carrying out public works, and said he would like to have a few jobs at the price that was paid for cooperative works. The men had told him that they easily earned 10s a day on socalled relief works and they could have earned more but for the fact that there would have been a row if they had drawn more than Ho a week. This was the sort of thing they had to put up with underthis great Liberal Government. He attributed the numerous references of cases to the Conciliation Board to agitators, and asserted that the agitators were backed up by the Government, whoso policy in labour matters was going to ruin the industries of the colony, He had found men in different parts of the colony who in the past had been among the biggest supporters of the Government now going the other way. Ho was afraid that the good ship “Liberal,” of which many of them had been so proud, was fast drifting on the rocks, and that it would take a good many towlincs to keep her off them.

Subsequent speakers, amid laughtci congratulated Mr Hutson on his conversion.