The Manawatu Herald. Thursday, June 13, 1912. NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIV, Issue 1056, 13 June 1912, Page 2

The Manawatu Herald. Thursday, June 13, 1912. NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Wk had au interesting conversation with a fairly successful business man the other day, in reference to the possibilities afforded young fellows of average ability in this country to push their way ahead independent of the labour agitator. He informed us that he served his time in a Doudon warehouse. The roving spirit was in his bones and he decided to come out to the colonies. He lauded in Australia and after roughing it there for a few months crossed the Tasman and arrived in New Zealand eight years ago, without triends, and 15s and some personal clothing as all his worldly possessions. He lost no time in hunting up work and found that employers of labour in almost any sphere could always find a place for a man who was willing to prove himself worthy of their confidence. “I took a billet which was somewhat strange to me, but soon got into the running. I saw other openings ahead and qualified to fill them as opportunity arose. To make a long story short I got on alright, and about two years ago was able to strike out on my own in a modest way, and those for whom I worked were only too pleased to assist me. lam doing alright and given good health can win through. lam a sport, but I am not a money or time-waster. What I have accomplished has been practically off my own bat, and I have no time for the fellow who can’t get ahead of things in this country. The opportunities are here, afforded to every young chap for getting on in every avenue of trade if he wants to. I have not associated myselt with the agitating class and from what I have seen of the men at the head of industrial unionism, the less young fellows have to do with them the better it will be for them. I have tailed to find one agitator in this country who can point to a successful record in any calling in which he has been legitimately engaged. There is plenty of room at the top for young fellows in this country who are prepared to play the game, and employers on the whole, are men who have gone through the mill themselves and are prepared to appraise and reward merit and ability, independent of industrial unionism. The industrial conditions of the Old Country have not and will never obtain here, and the extremes to which the labour agitators are going, will tend in my opinion to create class distinction, distrust and industrial unrest. As I have said before the young man ot average intelligence can get along swimmingly in New Zealand if he so desires without any boosting by the paid agitator.'’

Exports from New Zealand during the month of May totalled .£2,373,802, as against ,£1,824,215 for the corresponding period last year. Details : Butter £(25,096, cheese .£119,325, frozen beef .£54,337, frozen mutton (carcases) 2252,466, legs .£388,589, wheat £,'8962, oats /n 0,321, potatoes £(3176, New Zealand hemp ,£55,173, rabbits £(1, tow £(4735, kauri gum .£53,369, grain and pulse (other than wheat) £(18,792, skins (ail kinds) .£126,117, tallow £(165,466, timber £(42,344, wool £(703,852, gold £(191,620.

What is described as the most advanced piece of child legislation ever adopted by any Parliament in the world has just been passed in Russia, and rules that in future, when he is knowu, a man will be held responsible for all expenses connected with the birth of his illegitimate child, and he must also keep the mother until she is able to earn her own living. More than this, until the child is 16 ii can claim entire support from the lather, and in the event of the parents marrying the child immediately becomes legitimate. Greatest revolution of all, however : All professions and offices which hitherto have been closed to men and women of illegitimate birth are now to be thrown open to them absolutely without restrictions of any kind.

A great influx of American tourists to New Zealand, as the direct result ot the opening of the Panama Canal in two years’ time, was predicted by Dr E. E. Slosson, a prominent New York journalist, who was a through passenger to Vancouver by the Zealandia on Friday last. Dr Slosson was greatly impressed with New Zealand as a tourist resort, during a recent visit to the Dominion, prior to proceeding to Australia. He told a New Zealand Herald reporter that this country ought to be better known to Americans through personal observations. This was especially the case in view of the fact that America was now looking to New Zealand for lessons from women’s suffrage, and the great question of labour. Both these problems were, he said, being given prominence by the administrators of several ol the leading American States.

Tins is the sort of editorial stuff the Maoriland Worker (syndicalist organ) is serving up to its readers just now :—“Victor we have been all along the line to date, and thus all the allies of capitalism—'which is exploitation, which is robbery, which is degrading servitude of the hunted but now rising working class —all the allies of capitalism, we say, are reaching oui to throttle us and fling us under their bloody heel. Fight we must, then, greater and grander than ever before. There need be no Waterloo for a working-class organisation meaning business and bent on emancipation at any cost —for the future in blissful reach and a working-class placed on high, with strikes, lock-outs, and tainted papers things of the dead past because the cause of them all —exploitation for profit—no longer despoils, degrades, and damns humanity.” It is very hard to tell what it is all about, says the New Zealand Times, but for the kind of people who are likely to be pleased with that kind of thing it is just about the kind of thing they are likely to be pleased with.

Those persons who are pleased to call themselves “anti-militarists” and “auti-couscriptionists” in this country (says the Wellington Post) include a number largely endowed with the bump of imagination. It is stated in a cable message from Adelaide that a Mr Fletcher, one of the two New Zealand delegates at a meeting of the Freedom League, remarked that “training in New Zealand was strenuously opposed with good success.” This is as impudent a misrepresentation of facts as some of the nonsense published in the pamphlets circulated in England by New Zealand’s alleged lovers of “freedom.” Failing to make any appreciable headway by fair or unlair means here, the enemies of a sane system of defence, which is an insurance policy for freedom, seem determined to give a wrong impression to people of other countries. Australia and England have been invited to regard the New Zealand self-styled “antimilitarist” as a valiant David slaying the Goliath of alleged “conscription” by slinging a few stones. This claim to prowess is laughable to New Zealanders who have observed the signal failure of a noisy minority to dictate to the majority. Unreason, backed by the lew, has unsuccessfully tried to sway reason, supported by the many. The reports from the officers entrusted with the establishment of national defence and the records of the training camps are an overwhelming refutation of the stupid statement made at Adelaide.