PROPERTY AND LABOUR.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 3003, 25 February 1926, Page 4

PROPERTY AND LABOUR.

A PRESIDENT’S WISE WORDS. Organised Labour in America believes in Capital. It stands for property as well as for labour. It is seeking better conditions not in some vision of a socialist State, but in securing for the worker a larger share of property. There are certain people who through ignorance or hate, talk as if the possession of property by others were a wrong. They hold forth on the “have nots” as though such unfortunates alone had rights to be considered. Nothing finer was ever uttered on this question of property in relation to Labour than these words delivered by President Lincoln to a Workmen’s association: — “Property is the fruit of Labour, property is desirable, is of positive good in the world. That some should be rich shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him that is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work diligently and build one for himself, thus by example showing that his own shall be safe from violence when built.” The possession of property is there rightly regarded as “encouragement to industry and enterprise.” This is a different message to the numerous socialist publications which treat of property as if it existed merely as a stimulus to envy and class hatred. What a rebuke to the philosophers of destruction is carried in the sentence —“Let not him that is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work diligently and build one for himself.” In the Labour movements of various countries to-day there is fay too much of teaching which runs on the line of pulling others down. Communist and Socialist doctrines are promulgated towards the incitement of class warfare. The objective is to take from the man of property, to: pull down what he has, and just as a house that is pulled down is not habitable for the deaiolisher so the wreckers find they nave lost what they have sought. The destructive method does not pay even the destroyers. Construc- • ive plans, and abjuration of vioence, industry, enterprise and thrift. They are old time virtues. It is, however, as true now as •vlien Abraham Lincoln spoke that liese ore the solid means if progress for the individual and the nation. Property being the fruit of labour, it .s the sincerest respect to labour to safeguard hnd protect the fruit, i'll use who look to the increase of property are labour’s friends whilst die destroyer is an enemy no matter •vhat line words he may use to cover his designs. (Contributed by the New Zealand Welfare League).