The Manawatu Herald. Thursday, May 9, 1912. IS IT A MENACE ?

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIV, Issue 1041, 9 May 1912, Page 2

The Manawatu Herald. Thursday, May 9, 1912. IS IT A MENACE ?

Tim tremendous labour troubles that are shaking the world are reflected In a minor degree in New Zealand, where none of the harsh conditions prevail which are the great reasons for strikes and quarrels among men whose position is frequently intolerable. In short the New Zealand working man has less to quarrel about than any working man on earth, and he would see this if the violent agitators who make their living by fomenting strife were relegated to their proper places in the national economy. We so often hear of the “revolt of labour’’ in New Zealand, we have threats that if such and such a concession is not granted “industries will be paralysed.” and the commerce of the country stopped. To accuse the body ol New Zealand workers of a desire to commit so heinous a crime is absolutely unjust. Agitators belonging to more or less insignificant organisations presume to speak for the whole body oi labour. There is no whole body of labour, but there are various small bodies each fighting like cats with the other. In the scuffle nothing is achieved for the whole body of labour and the yells of the agitators are beginning to pall on even the victims who are expected to till the agitators’ pockets. If you bottle up the agitators you obtain industrial peace. If his conceded that the good man is worth a good wage and the inefficient dear at any price, you must concede that the iniquitous assumption of agitators that the waster is the wage equal of the best man is socialism gone mad. Threats to paralyse industry are easy to make. They are the acme of arrogance and the people who yell such threats assist in doing so that the population of a country can be kicked into subjection by a section of self-glorify-ing tyrants. The people of Australia shown that the tyrants can be put in their places by the simple expedient of popular organisations against them. Brisbane crushed its tram strike. The time is going by when a large number of men can down tools when they like and lake them up when they like, inflicting irreparable injury in the meantime. The people especially in regard to public services can emphatically declare that a job won’t be there when the aristocrats ol labour come to take it up. We have no quarrel with the effort ol any section of the public to obtain political power, because if labour is able to collar the government of a country it follows that the people condone the capture, for no party can achieve and maintain power against the express wish of the people. The people who suggest autocratic labour rule as the panacea lor all national troubles are of course speaking out of class selffishuess and desire for place. There is no virtue in the mechanical phrases and misunderstood clap-trap their people give lorth and the effect of these continued ravings is not so potent as it used to be. Any political party must nut only capture the imagination of the people by promise of deeds, but it must do the deeds. There is no evidence anywhere in New Zealand that the so-called Labour Party has a constructive policy, cr that the sell-important agitators whose voices are calling in the wilderness can construct as well as destroy. There is also no evidence anywhere that the people of New Zealand desire to hand their business over to the representatives of any single class. We hold the opinion that the umest at present being expciienced is a mere phase, that the efforts to inflict topsyturveydom will tail, and that the period of fanaticism and insanity, of which agitators are the special ministers, will be succeeded by a time and peace, when individual meat is the only basis of wages and a man is known by the things he can do and not by the labels he Wears,