Put Your Shoulder to the Wheel

Industrial Unionist, Volume 1, Issue 7, 1 August 1913, Page 4

Put Your Shoulder to the Wheel

We are told tliat when the Roman slave got the wheel of his waggon into a bog-hole, and the best efforts of his team failed to shift it, he fell on his knees and called on the Gods for assistance. Of course, he got none. Whenever did the Gods do anything good, bad, or indifferent, let alone help ? But, as the story goes, Jove, the boss god, appeared to the man and told him to put his shoulder to the wheel, for the Gods help those who help themselves. This advice was a plain admission that he, like all the rest of his tribe, was a humbug, for when men set out to help themselves they soon discover that they can do without external assistance, especially of the celestial kind.

Now the Working Class of the world are up against a stiff proposition to get for themselves that portion of their earnings knows as surplus value, that which not they, but some other fellow, gets. Around the solution of this problem circulates and whirls that seemingly inexplicable mass of contention which we call the class struggle.

The ruling class of the world, whose very existence depends on their ability to continue to purloin this surplus value from the workers, are keenly alive to the situation and have established such a system of organisation, so plausible and fair-seeming, that the very workers whom they rob assist them in its maintenance. The soldier,

the policeman, the law r yer, and the parson are all used for the purpose, the two former by far the most useful and necessary and almost wholly consisting of members of the Working Class, who are thus made to brandish a club and keep themselves in subjection.

Not the least useful of the means by which the exploited are cajoled and coerced is the present Parliamentary system. By persistantly dangling the carrots of reform before the nose of the industrial ass they continue to possess the ability

and opportunity to nullify all such reforms as soon as granted. This is clearly shown in the particular instance of the Arbitration Court and its attempt at the fixing of a minimum wage. By means of their organisation the owners of land and factories, etc., are able, in some cases, of an increase in wages being granted in the court, to make it the cause for a practical decrease. Take a concrete, verified statement as a proof. A. 8., a carter, benefited in money by the last award to the extent of 3/- per week. His wife, being a careful woman, was in the habit of keeping a strict account of her expenditure. Within a month she found that, owing to a stealthy increase of prices, |d here and Id there, insignificant in detail, but serious in the aggregate, her expenditure had gone up to the extent of 2/4 per week, and to crown all the landlady wanted 2/6 per week increase in rent, so that whatever the court had condescendingly granted in increased money wages, the real wage was reduced by so many loaves of bread, so much grocery, fuel, amusements, etc.

Now what are the Workers doing to better these conditions, which are steadily becoming worse, not because man is naturally bad, but because the system exists only by the development of that which is bad in him ? The first essential in the interest of the working class of the world is to organise for their common benefit. Happily for the future many members of the working class, in almost every country, are aware of this, and are working to that end. Here in New* Zealand we have those who, however much they may differ as to the means adopted, are fighting against tremendous odds to achieve that solidarity in action, without which no • thing useful can be done in the way of bringing to fruition the great ideal of: “the world’s wealth for the world’s workers.”—DEUCALION.