The Manawatu Herald. Thursday, February 15, 1912. NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIV, Issue 1007, 15 February 1912, Page 2

The Manawatu Herald. Thursday, February 15, 1912. NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Mr O. E. Hugo, of Goie, writes as follows in Saturday’s Issue of the Southland Times, touching a distinguished early settler: — “ Sir, —The Danish papers of last November have illustrated articles on the occasion of the centenary of a Danish statesman who was also one of the New Zealand early settlers, and whose descendants are New Zealand citizens to-day. Bishop Monrod was the Premier who passed the one man one vole in Denmark in 1854. He was Premier during the war with Germany in ’64. Very probably a more diplomatic man might have prevented the war; but Mon rod was no match for Bismarck, and Bismarck was fully determined that there should be war, as only by that means could he gain his purpose. No man fell the result ot the war so deeply as Bishop Mourod. He decided to leave the Old World and went to New Zealand with bis lamily. F'or some time he lived m Nelson. He then bought a thousand acres of land in the Mauawatu district, between Foxtou and Palmerston. It was then a swampy plain covered with dense bush ; but is now about the most valuable land in the Dominion, and is owned by his grandchildren. The Bishop himself stayed in New Zealand only live years, when he went back to Denmark and died in 1882.”

There is throughout New Zealand among the industrial classes an influence at work adverse to industrial peace, and provocative oi strife and turmoil. This influence was evidenced in the utterances of certain Labour leaders during the recent strike in Wellington. Among the leaders of the workers there are men who advise their comrades to regard no standard ot right and justice save their own, and to obtain what they conceive to be their “ rights ” by the exercise ot organised force. These leaders are endeavouring to persuade the workers that they have nothing to hope from the Arbitration Act, that the sympathies of the Court are with the “capitalist employers,’’ and that the workers cannot expect to receive “ justice” from it. They advocate that the Arbitration Act should be repudiated by the workers and that organisation tor striae purposes should take its place. Their idea is a federation ot all labour unions, with the understanding that when one union strikes in order to obtain compliance with its demands it shall be supported by all other unions. While the Arbitration Act has not accomplished all that was expected of it; it has done much to preseive industrial peace and better the condition of the workers and with further amendments would be preferable to syndicalism advocated by certain extreme labour agitators. We believe with a contemporary that il the workers are carried away by the flashy rhetoric of orators of the Semple type then the Dominion will yet have to face a struggle of the bitterest type, in which the workers will inevitably suffer heavier loss and more severe distress than the employers. It is scarcely conceivable that mischievous advice will prevail, and wc venture to hope that laws for the pacific settlement of industrial disputes will always remain upon the Statute Books of the Dominion.