THE Kaipara Advertiser AND WAITEMATA CHRONICLE. WEDNESDAY, JAN. 22, 1913.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 22 January 1913, Page 2

THE Kaipara Advertiser AND WAITEMATA CHRONICLE. WEDNESDAY, JAN. 22, 1913.

LABOUR AND THE NEW - YEAR. Whatever the French Emperor meant when he said that the Empire was Peace, he did not mean Peace. Thus the Labour unions are proclaiming peace, and war is apparently at the bottom of their hearts. Take the Slaughtermen who want to stick up the meat companies who pay them more than a pound a day; they are angry because their officers have failed to satisfy the department of Labour that the cancellation of registration is desired by the majority of their men. Whose fault that is but the officers' no one can explain. The fact is that the day has passed when any statement was accepted from any union official by the Labour department. The day has also gone when the Department helped the officers out in all their work. The day has come when the union officials must earn the salaries paid them by the institutions they mislead. They ought to have satisfied the Department of the desire of the men —which is, in spite of all the bluster of the officials, doubtful, at least, —and having failed to do their duty, they ought to take the consequences. That is, they must enter into another agreement on the old terms, or be heavily mulcted with small chance of ever getting back their old position. The miners are in no better case. The federationists are asking to be allowed once more the lead in a business which they have shockingly mismanaged, and the " United " party is insisting on ruling the world in all things, and in labour matters, on having both the arbitration law and the strike for their protection, falling on violence at their option whenever the law does not give them what they want. What they want, they must have, right or wrong. Like the federationists, they are for the arbitration, but it is an

arbitration that must decide every time in their favour. This position is made more intolerable by their insistence on the referendum which ignores Parliament, on the initiative which ignores Governments, and the recall which makes magistrates as unnecessary and as obsolete as Parliaments and Governments. The miners all the time are chewing the cud of Waihi, and it is whispered in various quarters that the Maoris who were taken on at Waihi after the great strike collapsed, are as good every bit as the men they replaced. Be that as it may, the days of Labour ascendency seem to be numbered in the land through sheer inability of Labour to see that the rest of the world has any rights.