The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is in corporated the West Coast Times. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 11, 1925. THE SRELETON IN THE OTPHOARD

Hokitika Guardian, 14 October 1925, Page 2

The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is in corporated the West Coast Times. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 11, 1925. THE SRELETON IN THE OTPHOARD

I winiit’.x :■ |>p<-;iI In I lie lii’u:. lt- "I New Zealand. as it■ |• ri■ ■M'lili’il )lir npciiIII” >|ii'i'rlii'v ri> .Mr ||. |;. 11 << 11 ii im I mill Mi .1 MTniiili.s' mill tin' elect i< i n riug literal iiic ill' Mr K. I lin'. in ’il. saythe Lyttelton Time- in Munitioning op till’ politil.'ll ;l■“ j i•: t . pills ill” S'dl | <-i In I mi tlif Socialist aims ill’ ilir party, mol give- prominence to a prngl a 01IIH that io political character i- hardly distinguished from those of the other two parties. Karl Mars has not mice heeo oicotiooed, hot instead. Mr M'Cooihs ipiote.s the opinions ot an American capitalist, a oiulti-milliooaire named Henry Ford, io support ol his contention that high waees are a good thine fur the country. Mr M'Comh.s is not the only Socialist who Inis found himself in strong spiritual sympathy with Mr Ford Hubert Hlateliford made the same discovery, lint we believe he found, after searching his soul, that Fordism was ineonipatihle with Socialism. so lie cave up Socialism. High wanes, of enuse, are only a part of Mr Fold’s philosophy. Before the high waces can he paid they have to lie earned, and that is made possible Icy a Very Inch degree of efficiency find even enthusiasm, that extends from the top to the bottom of the industrial organisation. So far as Fordism is based upon common sense and Mr Ford's doctrines certainly assay a very large percentage u f that commodity it is applicable to the every day industrial problems of every country. New /calami included. But it offers no royal road io prosperity and national wellbeing. The principal ingredients of success in the Ford recipe, as in all others, are intelligence, hard work and fair dealing. The l.nhmir Party uf New Zealand is si. constituted that it cannot carry- the Ford principles into the domain of practical polities. because. it ii acre given the reins of power, it would have to relimpiish them In the leaders of the very first strike tor higher wages that occurred under its regime. Mr .'['Combs, who is erediled with being one of the more logical and also one of the more moderate members of bis party, made ibis abundantly clear at the close of his address at Lyttelton on Friday evening, when, answering a ijiiestimi concerning the strike of British seamen, lie said the strike would have been settled by the Covernment finding the difference between the wages asked for by the men and those offered h.v the employers. Mr Af'Combs sutlers from no delusions concerning the way in which that strike lias been engineered. He knows it was fomented and fostered by well-known Communist leaders, aim induced thousands of seamen to repudiate their own union, and lie knows that if such a strike succeeded in obtaining its objective ii would be the forerunner of similar adventures in every department of industry. But lie is committed to the doctrine of Nietzsche, which is also the doctrine of the Communists, that a good war justifies any cause. If the worker strikes for higher pay. then higliei pay must he given him. It is a sj m . |e plan, attractive to simple minds, but it is incompatible with the whole of the more or less moderate practical proposals with which the Labour Party camouflages its objective on the present occasion. Mr Howard, for instance. proposes to onf freights in half on the service he tween Britain and New Zealand by using State-owned motor ships, hut if the employees on those ships had only to strike for higher pay in order to get it they would spend most of their time striking. and their wages would soon overtake any saving in freight achieved by using a different sort of fuel. Tieskeleton in the Labour Party's cupboard is the realisation that oiee in power, it is powerless, to perpetrate fir; Irishism It must bow to the

will of any agitator dim heads a movement for more wages or less work. It must outlaw the rest of tile community—as is happening to-day at Fremantle and at Brisbane jp order to ensure that those agitators shall lie able to wreak their will upon the employers they have attacked. The a rcs sion to oflier of the New Zealand l.a hour Party would be a direct iuvita tion to all the crazy or criminal professional Bolsheviks ill Australasia to make New Zealand their lionm and in take tin 1 trades unions, mil of the hands of imn-Commimist.-. Noliody wlm Ims followed the course of events in Queensland, in New .South Wales, in South Australia, and in Western A ns. tralia in retent weeks can doubt tin inevitability of such a result. It flow* directly front the fundamental l.abou principle that workers who strike fm higher "ages must he given higliei wages.