UNITED LABOUR PARTY.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VII, Issue 527, 18 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 to 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.)

BUT YOU CAN'T AFFORD IT. At every point when the proposal is made to make a private monopoly a public enterprise the complaint is made that the public can't afford the money. It will coat so much to establish a public enterprise that it cannot be undertaken. The answer is that it costs more not to do it than it can possibly cost to do it. In many cities in Great Britain and on the Continent co-operative and municipal bakeries have been established. In every instance there ha 3 resulted better bread, lower prices, more saniatry conditions, better conditions fur the labour employed, and in no case has there been a loss to the community on its investment. Doing it has always proven to be cheaper than not doing it. Take Wellington. It is estimated that an up to-date bakery, sufficient to supply the whole community with say 15,000 loaves daily, would cost £40,000 to completely equip for the making and the distribution of the bread. If the £40,000 were to be carried as a permanent loan at 5 per cent, the annual cost would be £2OOO. But the bread could be produced and delivered in oiled paper, with never human hands touching it or the foulness of the street reaching it from the time it left the ovens till it reached the dining rooms of the people, and the bread could be produced and delivered and interest charges paid at 2d per loaf. The current price is 3sd. That would be a nett saving of lid per loaf. There would be a business of 15,000 loaves daily. This would mean a nett saving for the year of £33,645 to the people in their bread account.

• Yes, but this would mean a loan of £40,000. This city cannot afford tu make the loan. It is better to borrow £40,000 once than to lose £33,645 annually, and then have all the filth of the street and all the danger of infection carried with the bread to every home. But if the city cannot use its credit to borrow £40,000 it can do what might be a better thing—it can sell bread certificates at a reduced price, collect the payments in advance, and finance the bakery without the borrowing of a single shilling, could pay for the bakery with the bread produced in the bakery by spreading the cost of the plant to the price of the bread, say, extending over a period of five years.

All that would be necessary to do this would be simply for the City Council to become a business body devoted to actually doing the business of the people instead of doing nothing, while wasteful methods of production and dangerous methods of distribution in enterprises out-of-date render the poorer service for the higher price. FRATERNAL DELEGATES. Hereafter the British Trades Union Congress will send a fraternal delegate to the annual Labour Congress in Canada. The man chosen to be the first delegate is Will Thorn. Hasten the day when such delegates will be sent to all English-speaking nations. The interchange of delegates has been made between the United States and Great Britain for eighteen years, and the annual visit to the United States of those who represent the British trade unionist hascome to be an event looked forward to year by year, and is always of very great importance to the American movement. Lecture tours are arranged, receptions given, and the best which England, has to say is said of the cousins in Yankeeland.

Recent visits to the United States from Germany have been keenly appreciatedin the same way. For the first time in American history a representative of the trades unionists of a foreign country was shown the courtesy of being invited to speak to the House of Representatives of the American Congresa. It was on the occasion of the visit of the vice-president of the central organisation of the German trades unions less than a vear ago that this occurred. The British and Continental trades unionists are constantly "changing works," and with every such vißit the solidarity of the workers of the world is greatly promoted, the strength of the movement greatly increased, the danger of international war greatly lessened, and the coming of industrial justice hastened not for on trade or for one nation, but for all workers in all lands.

The United Labour farty depends entirely upon an appeal to the intelligence, to the public spirit, and to the public interest in the proposals it offers. The only way the United Labour Party could be driven out of New Zealand would be for the great body of the people of New Zealand to abandon their own intelligence and repudiate their own judgment and betray their own interests. It will be a day or two yet before that programme will be adopted. While Keir Hardie was touring America in the interests of the Socialist propaganda, a woman in his own country died and willed him 19,000 dollars in trust, to be expended in furthering the labour organisation and education in Great Britain. The United Labour. Partv is the