CORRESPONDENCE.

Horowhenua Chronicle, 8 December 1913, Page 2

CORRESPONDENCE.

'Our correspondents' opinions are their own; the responsibility of editorial ones makes sufiicient ballast for the editor'? shoulders.] INDUSTRIAL I In REST. (To the Edito"). Sir, The present industrial conflict has shown that we are under a despotism of (he upper middleman, the shipowner, the landowner, the merchant. Specially the merchant, backed by the high-toned, pure and holy Tory press which, with its very thin layer of polish, now rubbed oil', stands out dishevelled and merciless* in its vicious snarl. Just note how "his nibs," the middleman dictates the law. In a convenient move a strike is deliberately forced on the men and the price of settlement is "register onder the Arbitration Act"-o,r starve. That settles it. "His Nibs" has spoken. It is claimed that this merchant— middleman employer's soul is so lily-white and immaculate that n: would delile itself in contact with ihose awful Red Feds; yet recent breaches of industrial awards stanf on the employers and lon the men. It; is puzzling to see in a late Journal of the Labour Department a recent .judgment of the Appeal Court; against the Merchants' Association for a breach of the Commercial Trust Act in connection with the cornering of sugar. Now note: livery time an article is cornered and price sent up it is a stiike against the public from which there is no appeal or arbitration. (Arbitration is good for the other fellow, not the merchant). Also the report,of the Cost of Living Commission says: "The Commission has definite proof that the members of this

New Zealand Merchants' Association have banded together for (lie purpose of restraining irade in their own'interests and boycotting independent" traders." These "purposes are really those of the old time highwaymen, minus his risks When we realise that an active federation of workers' unions and its political expression m Parliament is the power likely to effectively curb the rapacity- ol' these merchants, their bull-dog tenacity in wanting to destroy labour organisation is at once understood. The inevitable after effects of this merchants' piece of strategy will be a sorely-im-poverished country and twenty Social Democrats in the next Parliament.—l am, etc.- -

11. EEGER Weraroa, December (>, 191-5.