UNITY CONGRESS COMMITTEE.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VII, Issue 543, 19 February 1913, Page 3

UNITY CONGRESS COMMITTEE.

CONGRESS CONVENED FOR JULY Ist, 11913, AT WELLINGTON (The matter in this column is supplied by authorised advocates of the Basis of Unity adopted by the Trade Union Conference, which met in January at Wellington. The writers of the articles are alone responsible for the opinions therein expressed). THE NEED FOR UNITY. By Edward Tregear. There are three questions all workers should ask themselves concerning unity. These are: Have we needed it? Do we need it? Shall we need it? "Have we needed it? The wtwle co'urse of industrial history is one flaming discouragement of disunion; one flaming incentive to collective action on the part of the workers. You must be reminded of the past; it is no good forgetting or trying to ignore it, for out of its darkness you have emerged and into its darkness you will sink again if you will not learn the wisdom it preaches at you, screams at you. Slavery, serfdom, cruelty, ignorance, injustice lay like a horrible black web across the faces of the workers centuries a"go. Here two or three, there two or three, met together, coalesced, held meetings in which they recounted their wrongs, took counsel for redress, subscribed their pitiful little funs, and became the nucelus of a star of Hope in our social system. In a phrase, they had learnt what industrial union meant. Tbey had an awful task before them, a task to chill the bravest heart. Read what a calm, thoughtful man of weight in the world of letters says—don't confuse him with revolutionary agitators—his name is Thorold Rogers, author of "Six Centuries ol Work and Wages." This is hi 3 verdict: —

"I contend that from 1563 to 1824, a conspiracy, concocted by the law and carried out by parties interested in its success, was entered into to cheat the English workman of hiß wages, to tie him to the soil, to deprive him of hope, and to degrade him into irremediable poverty For more than two centuries and a half the English law and those who administered the law were engaged in grinding the English workmen down to the lowest pittance, in stamping out every expression or act which indicated any organised discontent, and in multiplying penalties upon him when he thought of his natural rights." In this quotation you catch some faint reflection of what the founders of unionism had to endure. Against them were kings, nobles, lawyers, employers, masters; against them were wealth, education, privilege old customs, monopolies all—when arrayed thuswise—potent forces of the Powers of Darkness. Shall we give away what those gallant.undaunted hearts of the elder time won for us?

Unionism, and unionism alone, has prevented the workers from being broken one by one under the wages svstem and under "freedom of contract." The unorganised employments have been ground and sweated till they have produced the swarm of degenerates which now disgrace every "civilised" country, and only the force of unionism has delivered a portion of the working class from weltering in the industrial hells which mny manufacturing towns have become. In truth, the history of the past answers our first question plainly and vividly enough. Unity among workers has been sadly needed. Do we need it? Now, perhaps, more than ever. Not because our sufferings are worth mention beside those of our forefathers; not that we deserve more than thpy did; but because our very privileges demand it and because a sense of true manhood and womanhood burns in us which was almo3t trampled out of existence in the hard lives of our predecessors. The education that they did not have but that we have received insists that we, being able to recognise our right to live, and to live hopeful and worthy lives, subject to the caprices of no other human being, should be determined that neither ourselves nor our children should be used as mere fuel for the industrial fires or as the providers of luxuries for those who do nothing to earn them. If here, in New Zealand, we have not yet reached that degradation which our present economic system produces elsewhere; if we have food and clothes and a sheltering roof in most cases, still we look to industrial unity to provide something more; something more than enough food and clothing to enable us to go on from day to dav working for the profits and massed fortunes of more astute and crafty men than ourselves. We want to receive the value of that which our labour gives to the world, neither more or less. Only by united action can we hope to get it. There are wise lessons to be learnt from the old Greek myths. Here is one. Jason, in search of the Golden Fleece, had, before he could gain that desired object, to perform some heroic tasks. One of >;hese was "sowing the dragon's teeth." When he had sownd ?teeth in a field there immediately sprang up a host of armed men, who barred his path and were about to take his lie, but Jason's sweetheart, who was a witch as well as a princess advised him to throw a stone among them. He did so and the armed men turned their swords upon one another slaying until all were consumed. Now for the application. We of the workers' party in New Zealand are the band of armed men and the stone of Discord thrown among us has turned the sword of each against the uther to our social and political destruction while the prices and witches have looked on with laughter and scorn crying: "Why should we fight them?. Let them alay themselves!" The United Labour Party, the Federation of Labour, the Socialist Party, the isolated and unaffiliated unions, the non-unionist workers—all these have for years been warring, abusing, vilifying one another, while

the Squatters' Ring, the Employers Federation, the banks, the mining specualtors, the capitalistic, newspapers, the commercial trusts have only stopped looting now and then—to laugh. It is time that it ended. It is time that we understood our position, and that we make them understand theirs. I seem to hear the glorious command of General Grant in the American Civil War: "The whole line will advance!' 1 In six months' time you will have a chance to show if you really want unity in labour or not. At the July congress there will be an opportunity to every member of a trade, every advanced thinker, every variety of progressive economist to bring service and consolidation to the counsels of his fellows. The labour laws you voted for, worked for, fought for, are being insidiously destroyed, and legislation that will purloin your heritage, cripple your activities, lessen yoir earnings, and bleed you white will be introduced and made permanent unless you wake up and join hands with your brothers in the light of the new day and the new hope. Yes, we need unity—now. Shall we need unity in the future? —Ay, and we shall not only need it, but we shall get it. We shall not always remain the fools of Time and the jests of cunning knaves. If you need unity for yourselves, ten times more you need it for your children. You have toiled and denied yourselves to bring up families for our admirable industrial and commercial system to assimilate and consume. Deny yourselves a little wnilp longer, and let your unity give those children a freer, cleaner, better life than you have ever had. or ever possibly could have so long as you waste your strength in fighting your comrades, waste your votes in electing your enemies to power, waste your substance in providing superfluities for the vulgar rich. Get together! Get together! "The whole line advance!"