SCRIBBLING PAD NOTES

Hokitika Guardian, 13 September 1929, Page 2

SCRIBBLING PAD NOTES

(By “X.”) A cable of the oth. inst. states that the total paralysis of industry throughout New South W ales for ‘24 hours was proposed at a Labour Council meeting if the seven timber strike leaders were convicted of conspiracy. A conference of the executive of all un.ons is to be called to consider the matter. It has always been the dream of labor extremists that the time would arrive when a few labor bosses by holding up their lingers could bring all industry to a standstill. That time has not yet arrived, however, nor is it likely to. If wiser counels do not prevail and the proposal of the x<abor Government was to be given effect to, it would probably mean the beginning of the end as far as labor unionism is concerned. The law courts must decide whether these strike leaders were guilty or not, and if guilty they must be punished. Otherwise it would mean the end of all law and order, and the institution of a reign of anarchy. However, as labor unionists all told, are only a small percentage of the people of the country, and as the brainless extremists are again only a very small percentage of the labor unionists, the danger of the proposed paralytic stroke is probably very small. The London “Clarion” vouches for the truth of the statement that on the eve of the last British Elections, Scotland Yard discovered that the confidential secretary of the Conservative Party was an active member of the Communist Party.

The Wellington Post, referring to the Land Bill points out that the conservative agrarian policy of the Reform Government was bound to trip them up sooner or later. All through the long tenure of office of the Reform Government, paper provisions for the compulsory acquisition of lands were retained on the Statute Book, but it was the foundation principle of Reform that these provisions should be ( toothless. In the new Land Bill (if it passes) the teeth are there, though they are not visible on the surface, because their existence has been arrived at not by putting a new mouth on the compulsory purchase looc. but by knocking off the muzzle which the Reform Government had carefully maintained. . . The repeal of Clause 36 of the Principal Act (which Mr Forbes’ Bill provides for) knocks many snags out of the existing land lows, and seems to leave the course much clearer for State purchase of land, which inav cease to be a matter of parchment and may become a real weapon for subdividing sub-divisible estates.