CURRENT COMMENTS

Industrial Unionist, Volume 1, Issue 6, 1 July 1913, Page 2

CURRENT COMMENTS

The Timaru District Farmers’ Union, which was instrumental in the procuration of scabs sufficient to break the recent strike of the Watersiders down there, held recently its annual conference, when “ a remit to the Dominion Conference was adopted to the effect that the Union take steps to organise emergency committees, as was done at Timaru, to secure labour (scabs !) to meet a waterside strike at any port.”

The farm labourers of N.Z. must feel charmed by their masters’ confidence in their trustworthiness as scabs. The average bumpkin’s intelligence hovers around nil, we know, and he has little or no time to improve it; still, he might be directly helped along the road to disillusionment. That there’s many a slip ’tween cup and lip might well be remembered by the rebels on the wharves, and the scabs will not forget it. And if the farmers find it indeed impera-

tive that they invade the wharves, and thus destroy the strikers’ cliance of making a decenter living, then the strikers may also find it indeed imperative that they invade the holy sanctuary of the woolshed, the barn, the orchard. Many an old swagger has, by an innocent reference to hot sun and dry grass, transmuted a cocky’s scorn into a feed and a flop.

A Boot Manager, writing _in Auckland’s Liar-in-Chief, and Massey’s constant inspiration, says that “ cane shanks, cardboard stiffeners and puffs, and wood pulp heels are as freely used in this Dominion by the boot manufacturers as in any other country. It is no secret either.” Now, if the workers would only be true to their own good nature we should not have to await a bosses’ quarrel before gleaning tit-bits as above. There’s no call for the wish that empty margarine kegs could only speak. Any ordinary flesh and blood baker, were he not so damned honest, could prevent much fraud and adulteration. Jaundiced hogs’ fat is practically in general use among the Auckland bakers, in spite of the fact that N.Z. is a great butterproducing country. Hogs’ fat ! Ugh ! anyone with only a wind-

ward acquaintance of a piggery in N.Z., especially one alongside a freezing works, would vomit at the

mere suggestion of bacon.

The new Hamburg-American liner Imperator is the subject of

mysterious rumours. Her construction was much delayed by strikes, and now, judging by recent press reports, her workings are being interrupted by what looks very much like sabotage. We are not informed by the press whether or not the workers aboard have grievances none will remedy, but it can be confidently assumed that such is the case, for the saboteur is at work. Costly carpets and furniture have been ruined; liquid cement has been poured down the water-pipes and left to harden, with the result that 2000 workers

were required to carry out the necessary repairs. That looks like fighting on the job, wages forthcoming. Whether or not the shipping bosses have come across with the needful we don’t expect to find reported in the Herald } anyhow.— A.H.