CONSTRUCTIVE LABOUR MOVEMENT.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVII, Issue 2937, 17 September 1925, Page 4

CONSTRUCTIVE LABOUR MOVEMENT.

BETTER THAN SOCIALIST

THEORY.

Tlie New Zealand Alliance of Labour which is out for the “One big Union” —“the United Front,” and is promising the workers of New Zealand that if they will only join up with it they can all have a basic wage of £G per week, and hang the Arbitration Court —what has it done? It has been in existence for quite a number of: years and has done nothing but allow plenty of opportunity for talk.

The Alliance is based on Socialist theory and has never got down to basis of practice. “Control of all industries by the workers who operate them” is its slogan. Up till the present it has not enabled the workers to own and control as much as a boot-black’s outfit. The way to own industries is to. buy them. That is the practical method of gaining control. We will be told that the workers are “wage slaves” and can only find bare subsistence. That is simply rubbish. The truth is that the workers are misled. In their Unions they do not think and they do not try new and constructive plans. Like hide bound Tories they go on the same old round year after year paying into Unions which fritter the money away in usless wage wars or political stunts, to establish the Eldovada of socialism, and have nothing to speak of at each period of stock taking. American labour has found a new way but, then, it is not hog bound with socialist, syndicalist and communist ideas. There the Unions are saving their money and investing in business which they can control. There’ are at least 98,000 workers paying into Unions in New Zealand. Their contributions amount to roughly £128,000 in the aggregate every year. The Union could be run for half that sum and £64,000 a year invested in some industries would give the workers some control which they have never had. They are doing it in “the States.” Mr Sidey Hillman, President Amalgamated Clothing workers of America tells the story. LABOUR BANKING MOVEMENT. Mr. Hillman is one of the Board of Directors of the Amalgamated Labour Bank, New York, and Amalgamated Trust and Saving Bank Chicago. He talks as follows: — “It is just five years since Labour banking movement in the United' States began. In November, 1920 when the bank of the locomotive engineers was launched in Cleveland, the country was on the eve of the post-war industrial depression which has hardly been interrupted since. Yet this banking movement has grown more rapidly, and, indeed, more successfully than almost any other new enterprise of the labour movement. Already twenty-nine labour banks, with resources of close to ninety million dollars are in operation throughout the country As the following table shows, those institutions are now to be found in seventeen states under the control

and auspices of a highly diversified group of trade unions. In addition to these banks wholly controlled by Labour organisations, there arc two large banking institutions in which trade unions have a substnnial if not a controlling interest. At their last statement. these two institutions also had combined resources of practically ninety millions. As a result of the initiative of the Brotherhood of locomotive engineers, seven labour investment companies arc now doing business in this country. The promise which such a movement holds out cannot be overestimated. These investment companies have a combined capitalisation of more than 20,000,000 dollars. Figures showing the volume of their transactions are not available except for the Brotherhood Investment Company of Cleveland whose total assets on December 31st. 1924 werje 14,885,369.49 dollars. A PROFESSOR’S COMMENTS. Professor Thomas N. Carver, of the Department of Economics, Harvard University, makes these comments on this movement towards the diffusion of ownership: — “It is at least reasonable to expect that when the labouring and capitalist classes become somewhat

blended there will be less class-con-sciousness antagonism between them. It is reasonable to suppose also that this wide diffusion of ownership specially of the shares of large industrial corporations would result in a real demoeratisation as distinguished from the spurious sort known as government ownership.” ' lie points out, what is undoubtedly true, that the employee of the State does not feel he is working for himself and have any special interest in the work. The worker whose money is in the concern is differently placed. It is his inteiest to make the industry successful. This new labour movement, then spells progress both for the individual and the community. To the New Zealand Trade Unionists we say —“think it over.” It is a constructive plan. If the Americans can do it why not the New Zealanders ? (Contributed by the New Zealand Welfare League.)