CORRESPONDENCE.

Horowhenua Chronicle, 8 January 1914, Page 2

CORRESPONDENCE.

■ x [Our correspondents , opinions are > their own; the responsibility ,C of editorial ones makes sufli- C cient ballast for the editor'? $ shoulders.] i a OPEN LETTER TO FARMERS J (To the Editor.) * J Sir,—Please let me be heard in £ the interests of fair play, ify $ remarks haye: been published in \ Wellington, but' I want them to J' be read in youii district too. Here in Wellington "Jim the Pen- v name" and * Vastus Heaveiooks" " ' and about 1123 others have been writing to advise the workers andthe wont-workers and the like-to ' '■■ workers and every otiler descrip- -> tion of chap outside the workhouse. Seems to me time a plain and blunt man made a plain blunt pronunciation, on the preseut position. It is so misrepresented. ''The strike" was merely a ripple on the ocean of industrial affairs; M a safety valve through which the V hot-bloods of labour blew oft" tjieir extra steam. Some of us got scalded, and Bobickey and Arryolland and some others got blown definitely to where they will feel at home and labour' be relieved • from canying them. Experience cannot be imparted; it has to be learnt personally in vexation and ' suffering. All our.younger hotbloods have it now, and we will be solid and determined and'quietly dangerous and progressive until a new lot of young workers grow up and find their industrial wisdom teeth uncut. To-day Labour stands clearer-eyed, fir-mer-footed, more determine?!, cohesive and resolute £han at' any time these twenty years. Do the farmers who insisted I upon v Labour's "compulsory registration under the Arbitrauoi). 2k:ct whereover practicable"' consider they can escape the logical sequence of that action by their /scarecrow words "wherever practicable?" Bah! the three-year-old, refusal' of Mr Justice Sim to make an award governing farm labourers falls away from the book of : legal , ' precedent. It is struck dead by

the clamant call : of the employing class—the Citizens' and Farmers' Protection Committee-r-?or *'tnp» l Act, the wliole £ct, and nothing but, the Act." Do the ass-cons-cious Massey Ministry fkink they • • can escape the 'consequences' of their initial bungling m the han- '.'.•« dling of the latest strike? The/, ' Evening Post and the Dominion have been profuse m their' admi- v J.p]':> ration of the Massey. Government's- ■'.}' splendid stand for law and order against mob rule. Such sophis- *;.'' try. begs the real question of the case. In respect for the law I take second place to no one. '. If • unbridled men cut themselves loose from sanity 1 say repress , - - them. And,-.if: private intimidation is practised I say let the ' lawful forces intimidate. Wβ live securely only in the shadow of the gallows, that'is hidden behind the piled tomes fr ße it enacted," ■

and. whether the aeners oi ine Jaw's dignity be Dantons and Robespierres who temporarily tri- •' . e umph, or the lesser mosquitoes, , such 'as Wellington had recent • experiences of, there , awaits '. , them most surely the. actual dag- ,v ger of Charlotte Corday or flie r equally incisive ami more .admirable stilletto of thd legal sentences - passed in Wellington. But anterior to the "firm : and insistent steps" of the llassey Government was a. deplorable irresolu- : tion ; a constructive privity to the 1 subsequent" offence that involves the Hon. W/. Massoy and the ' 1 A. L. Herdman in the blackguardly rushing qf l ton whai"ves that necessitated, the irruption of special constables from < I the farms of the Wellington hin--5 terland (spurred by theii-own de--5 sires to avoid personal loss) and ! from the Wellington mercantile ' and banking offices (instigated thereto by a need to keep their jobs sweet). The eemi-criminal hesitancy of the Massey Government, when the initial mutterings i of insun'ection were heard, facilencouraged— the lawless rush of the strikers against the free labourers on the wharf. Any reasonable tactician would have centralised 'fifty of the per- * nianent force at the head of the Queen's wharf, behinu a properly, constructed barricade and successfully have resisted any rush' of the strikers. Then the work of. loading and unloading the steamers would have gone on uninterruptedly, and the -strike have been happily beaten in as few weeks as the actual months re- -,'. quired. This gaunt-yisaged ghost lurks in the Ministerial cupboard, and though no news- : papers have referred to it; the • ghost will be seen and laid-ap-oin long before 1914 is as > old jas _ \ e next year in which I Pending next elections' it may lurk repressed, but in tlose not distant months it will become incorporated as a political Frankinstein monster that will enwrap the masquerading Massey Govern- t ment and drag it down .tolhe po- • litical, obscurity that its political records have earned for it.—l am, G HENRY SAMUEL M.ITNSQN. Adelaide Road, Wellington , . " ■