UNITED LABOUR PARTY.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VII, Issue 529, 28 December 1912, Page 8

UNITED LABOUR PARTY.

CONDUCTED BY THE DOMINION EXECUTIVE COUNCIL. (The Easter Conference of the United Lafauur Party voted to make no paper its special, organ, but to provide official news ar>d comments to any paper promising to regularly publish the same. The paper is net 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.)

SOCIAL DISEASE.

Povertv was for a long time regarded as a direct infliction upon the people by the will of the Creator Whole libraries have been written to persuade the people to be grateful for being poor.

It was afterwards held to be a misfortune, a thing to.be regretted to be escaped from if possible; but nevertheless the fixed and unalterable condition of the masses of the people, It is coming to be held as a disease subject to hospital care yielding readily to scientific treatment.

When plant life is smitten with disease there ferble growth, inferior products, a degenerate reproduction These things ere characteristic of disease. Where thes* things are found in plant life, diseased conditions 2re immedistely affirmed.

Tuberculosis, typhoid cancer, all of the disorders of the human body, results of exhaustion, or of infection, mean in the same way loss of strength, inferior capacity, inferior service and degeneracy in the offspring.

But there i 3 a social life as well as an individual one. There is social health. There is both social health and social disease. life of the community may become disordered, crippled, void of productive capacity, given to vice. The social life as well as the individual life may reproduce degeneracy.

Whatever produces such results is a disease. These things in plant life, in individual life, and in social life are but the symptoms of some disorder.

It is no longer understood that poverty is a divine visitation or an explicable calamity. It is a social disease, as much so aa is tuberculosis among men and animals or blight in a garden of plants or flowers. Social hygiene will eliminate the disease. Scientific treatment will lead the way to recovery. Plague and infection were once held to be the visitation uf Providence. Now we know they are the products of ignorance and of neglect, and that where they appear it is the worst of blasphemy to depend upon religiuus ceremonials, to relieve the disorders, while the victims of these disorders neglect or refuse to adopt scientific methods of treatment. It was once held that religion could be established in tne thought of the race only by the demonstration of some authority or power sufficient to set aside the laws of nature It is now known that real religion is not manifest by a denial of the law or by any effort to reverse its pruceses. Real religion is shown in the revelation of the law and in the completest obedience to its requirements. There is not one problem left unsolved involved in the matter of the production of sufficient wealth. A mere fraction of the community, properly equipped, scientifically trained and set to the task could provide an abundance for all. If all were to be so trained and given opportunities for such employment, incomes could b» enormously increased, hours of labour greatly shortened, and intellectual and social pursuits be placed within the reach of all. The world does not need to know any more than it does knuw in order to make an end of tuberculosis, diphtheria, and typhoid. All it needs to do is to do as well as it knows. The world does not need to know a single thing which is not already known in order to end of the social disease called poverty. All that is needed is to do the things already known, already demonstrated and susceptible of proof to the satisfaction of any rationally minded human being.

Tuberculosis is not the visitation of God. It 13 fast becoming the crime of the individual and of society. Poverty is not the visitation of God. It is rapidly coming to be a crime 01 the individual and of society. To attribute either to the providence of God or to the helplessness of man is not an exDression of religious sentiment. It is the utterance of the worst of blasphemies. GREAT ACTIVITY—BAD RECORD. The Federation of Labour has not made an enviable record in the number of new organisations which it has created. It has not made an enviable record in the number of national federations of trade which it has created. It has certainly not made an enviable record in any increase in the membership of the unions which have been influenced by it. It has not been able to improve conditions of labour or to protect the interests of the workers by its disruptive tactics as effectively as could have been done by maintaining solidarity in the Dominion organisations and by holding the strike in reserve as a weapon only of last resort. It has shown dissension in all the unions. It has crippled those which it could not capture. It has broken into pieces organisations which it could not control. It has led local organisations into trouble, has deserted them in the middle of a fight; and in all these particulars it has ac-

al organisations would not boast of the record.

D>:!r Webb, president of the Federation of Labour, ig repcited to have said in Chri3tehurch in a public address that while it (She "Federation") had created a split it was the only true reprssentative of organised labour, and had done mora in four years than the old organisation had done in fifteen.