UNITED LABOUR PARTY.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VII, Issue 523, 4 December 1912, Page 3

UNITED LABOUR PARTY.

CONDUCTED BY THE DOMINION EXECUTIVE COUNCIL. (The Easter Conference of the United Labour Party voted to make no paper its special organ, but to provide official news and comments po any paper promising to regularly publish the same. The paper is not responsible for this column, and the party assumes no responsibility for any utterances of the paper except for its own official uterances in this department.)

THE WORKER, THE TARIFF, AND'THE TRUST.

The Wellington Operative Bootmakers' Union recently passed a resolution concerning the tariff on boots. Boot manufacturers and their employees have for some time been discussing the matter of protection. The Cost of Living Commission secured some very interesting information on the cost of boots. A writer in a recent paper suggests a bonus instead of a tariff, and makes a further suggestion that, instead of individual unions assuming to speak for the working class on the tariff question, the whole Labour movement of New Zealand shall take, a definite action stating what is in the interests of labour, and then fight the battle as a unit.

The solidarity of labour at the ballot box is just as essential as the solidarity of labour at the mine pits' mouths. The United Labour Party is doing its utmosl to secure solidarity of action at both plaess. But in order that there may be solidarity it asks for the most democratic discussion and for the complete mutual agreer ment as to what is to be one both at the mine pit and at the ballot boxes. Thiß is a necessary condition to real solidarity in doing whatever is agreed to be done. There are a few things which should be borne in mind in this tariff discussion. First, the tariff levied on goods not produced in New Zealand-is not a protective tariff. It can be justified only as a method of levying taxes, and on that score is utterly without justification. All such tariff taxes can be immediately abolished without any possible injury to any worker of New Zealand. Second, no tariff ought to be established to promote any New Zealand industry which finds itself unable to compete with foreign manufacturers, chiefly because of the unscientific management and the inadequate equipment of the New Zealand enterprise.

This last is particularly true of the boot manufacturers. In connection with the great American and European Bhops the process of making the boots are separated into one hundred and five distinct occupations. Not only.is there the most modern machinery, but each machine is related to every other machine, and all the workers, in such a way as to promote the greatest possible efficiency in its use. In New Zealand it is said in reply to inquiries that there are only five classes of workers, and the most expensive machinery is frequently idle for long periods because of the impossibility of securing and regularly organising a sufficient number of workers effectively related to each other in such a way as to make the most profitable use of the best tools possible. A New Zealand boot manufacturer said to the writer of these notes recently that he had a bit of machinery for which he paid £450, and which had been out of use for two years, and that for the above reason. Again, the raw materials used by the bootmakers are not by any manner raw materials in the sense that they are the products of the primary industries. The manufacture of leather is quite as much a part of the manufacture of boots, trunks, harness, a% is any of: the processes in the factories where these articles are finally produced. In America the beef trust is a central factor in the leather trust, which is in turn a great power in the central organisation which controls not only the production of leather as well as beef, but also controls the manufacture of all articles whose raw material is leather. The writer was told in Leeds, England, by the superintendent of the Cooperative Society of that city two years ago, that although they had established a small tannery as well as boot factory they were unable to produce boots in such a way as to save to the co-operators the economies which ought to be saved by co-operative production, and the reason was that they were unable to buy the materials for making certain grades of boots, and those the most profitable to manufacture, as cheaply as they could buy the boots completely manufactured. This is true in many other lines controlled by great monopolies. In America dealers can buy cigars cheaper than he can buy materials with which to make cigars. The harness maker can buy the finished harness cheaper than he can buy' the leather with which to make the harness. Is it not perfectly evident that the abandonment of the tariff of a trust control product would not necessarily lower the selling price for which the goods can be finally offered in New Zealand? The protective system, however, ought not to be established to protect leather making and boot making, as separate undertakings, and it certainly ought not to be established with a view of securing the production of boots within New Zealand under the wasteful, incompletely organised and unscientifically managed manufacturing enterprises now engaged in the

consumers it would simply extend territory'of the foreign monopolies.. The first thing essential is for manufacturers, aa well as workers of New Zealand, to understand that in the world's market both the leather and the products of leather are under the control of the same great international monopoly. To throw down the tariff is to give New Zealand to the undisputed possession of the world monopoly, but to maintain the tariff under the present conditions would be to doom New Zealand consumers to continue paying the losses of wasteful production for lack of proper equipment and scientific management in this country. The manufacturers of New Zealand should be told by the workers of New Zealand, immediately, that the workers are already combined to protect New Zealand against monopoly extortion from without, that is, against destructive competition of sweated labour from abroad, but not to protect or perpetuate wateful production at home. It should be understood at once that the trust is not an unmitigated evil. The boot and leather trade should be consolidated into a single productive organisation. The Government should not attempt to prevent this. There is business enough in New Zealand for one up-to-date establishment. If it were properly equipped it would produce the best and cheapest boots on earth, so far as they can be produced directly, from the raw materials grown on the backs of New Zealand animals. Such a trust ought to be organised, current companies ought to be given certificates in the concern in exchange for their present equipments. The Government should guarantee, say 5 per cent., on the properties so involved, it should fix the wages, shorten the hours, require reasonable pay. It should encourage the giving to the management and to the men a slight advantage as a'bonus for effective management and services. It should require all surplus above these charges to disappear by the reduction of the selling prices for the boots sold by the trust direct to the consumers. That would be one way to protect labour. Such an enterprise could all the time take its choice between producing or importing, and either could be done without loss to anyone, for the task would be to secure the largest possible service, for the least possible expenditure for the people of New Zealand. If provision were made that monopoly - controlled articles and the products of sweated labour, whether from New Zealand shops or from the shops of other countries, were not permitted on any terms in New Zealand markets, then earnings on the investments in New Zealand boot factories, the wages of New Zealand workers and the prices paid by New Zealand families for the boots under such circumstances might reasonably be held to be just payments.