PRESS COMMENT

Hokitika Guardian, 4 October 1928, Page 6

PRESS COMMENT

The flaxiuill workers have agreed to accept a reduction in wages rather than allow their industry to be closed down. It is hardly arguable that when workers in times of difficulty in any industry agree to a reduction in wages in preference to allowing the industry to be destroyed through its becoming unprofitable- they render a benefit to the industrial classes as a

whole. There can be no desire to disregard the value' of high wages system uneconomic provided the output is commensurate with the maintenance vf it. But there will be a great deal of hesitation on the part of workers themselves to accept the view of the Leader of the Labour Party that unless an industry can afford to pay its employees more than 13. s 6d per day it would be better that it should cease to exist and that the men who are engaged in it should be forced to join the ranks of the unemployed.—"Otago Times.”

The Government’s announcement of a grant of £2030 to Squadron-Leader Charles Kingsford Smith and Mr C. T. P. 171 m, co-commanders of the Southern Cross, will he everywhere applauded. The Southern Cross has done much more than stir the Dominion with a unique thrill. It has announced a new epoch of the Dominion’s history, in the most convincing tones; and it has stimulated, as no other event has stimulated or could stimulate, the force of thought and ambition to urge the Dominion on towards its mastery of the air. 'Phis is a service which the flovernment does well to acknowledge as it has done; and the public, which is glad to assent, will expect the Government to acknowledge it also, by profiting from its inspiration.—-Christchurch “Sun.”