EMPLOYERS AND DYNAMITE.

Industrial Unionist, Volume 1, Issue 19, 22 November 1913, Page 2

EMPLOYERS AND DYNAMITE.

A FLIMSY FAKE.

Nov. 22.

That the employers, as a whole, will go to any lengths to thwart, oppress, and generally crush Labour goes without saying among intelligent workingmen in any country to-day. But, owing to the peculiar personal relations existing between some workers and their employers in New Zealand, it is not universally recognised that a lawless and desperate minority of the Employers’ Federation are able to influence some of the more timid members of that body into, winking at the importation of the “ scare ” tactics of capitalist associations abroad. The local “ plot to wreck ” a train, said to be engineered by the above-mentioned minority, failed utterly owing to its clumsiness, and to the crudeness of the daily press in playing their part in reporting the affair. Moreover, those who concocted the plot to discredit Labour and help to break the strike have, owing to their amateurish methods, destroyed their chances of working a similar scheme for some time to come.

The further apparent plot to escape the consequences of the first one by arresting an old man of 75 may be a move to shift the blame on to one too feeble to put up a good resistance, or it may be the outcome of a bribe. At any rate, the story reported in the “ Star,” that an old age pensioner, who is a peddler of ointments, would engineer a “thrilling escape” of an express train by planting genignite, “ discovering ” it himself, and then reporting the matter, is too childish to catch even the average employer. The further press report; that when charged at the Police Court “ the accused was in a fainting condition, and had to be accommodated with a chair, and given water to drink,” has brought forth the comment: “ The old man must have been doped.” The whole plot indicates and emphasises the utter hypocracy of the enemies of Labour, who prate of “ Law and Order.”