OUR CAPITALIST CONTEMPORARIES.

Industrial Unionist, Volume 1, Issue 17, 18 November 1913, Page 2

OUR CAPITALIST CONTEMPORARIES.

Nov. 18.

THAT PERMANENT EDITORIAL.

It is well known that parsons keep a stock of ready-made sermons on hand, and deliver them at intervals. Many of them also exchange sermons in order to avoid detection from alert members of their congregations. But it is not generally known that editors of daily papers indulge in the same slim practice.

For some twelve months or more a familiar editorial article has appeared at intervals not only in the “Auckland Star/’ but also in our reptile contemporary, the “New Zealand Herald.” The intervals between the printing of the editorial have got shorter and shorter, as the I.W.W. has extended its influence, until it appears every other day in the “ Herald,” and every alternate evening in the “ Star.” The editors, however, are cunning enough to write a fresh opening paragraph each time it appears, and occasionally the context is rearranged/to guard against detection by a discerning public. The article in question generally opens with a paragraph of naively cunning flattery of the law-abiding New Zealand worker, after that comes a column or so of vague hints about dynamite outrages, repetitions of the phrase “ Law and Order,” ‘and references to the “ infamous I.W.W. of America.”

We have it on good authority. that until quite recently the article, set rip in linotype, used to be taken across from the “ Herald ” to the “ Star ” Office at the time when the name “ I.W.W. ” was repeated in 14 places m it; but since it has been used officer, and the “I.W.W/’ has been inserted in IT places, it has been set up in type for both papers for convenience sake. The transparently cunning “journalism” of the article has been a standing‘joke, not only in I.W.W. circles, but in the local Labour movement generally; so it is with some reluctance that we take the chances of having to part with an old friend and advise our two local contemporaries to do away with that article, for the sake of the British Public, and to set the office boy to work on the writing up of an entirely fresh editorial.