Labour Day.

Maoriland Worker, Volume 1, Issue 4, 15 December 1910, Page 12

Labour Day.

•' The Pang uitJiout the Palm. ,, (By " COMPASS.") The designation strikes unpleasantly upon strangers' ears, and rings discordantly through the free air of this Land of Canaan. Labour laAvs, Labour member. Labour union, Labour council. Labour paper, Labour Day, Labourite ! Glut of Labour. The freed slave rejoices in emancipation day : the great republic in its jubilee of independence ; each of which must suffer in outward dignity at least, under the characterisation of slavery day and subjugation day, or similar expressive appellations. Can it be imagined that the Chinaman will celebrate the abolition of the despised queue by labelling the day of the welcome decree pigtail day ? Then why exalt the name of sordid toil to the calendar of triumphant thanksgivings, in Christian lands? What's in a name? Only the brand of the fall from an infinitely balanced state of abounding good, to one of misery, iniquity and shame. It is a native impulse' in the creature man to exalt that which is honoured, beloved or revered, but what is labour? Sweat of the brow. And whence is it wrung ? From those sinful and unjust conditions of the earth which men and women are everywhere rebelling against and striving to the death to , overcome. Labour ! ceaselessly crushes the first essential of perfect human development-—freedom. Which remorselessly- subjugates the blossoming of every beauteous hope and joy in its nmltitudinous victims : which curses childhood, despoils womanhood and brutalises manhood : which kills, and kills and kills. Inexorable, mechanical grind; drab, pitiless and sunless; subscribing to one only surcharged sense of the whole physical and moral gamut of human economy. No part or question has Labour with the fulfilling consummation of true occupation, however strenuously accomplished or enduringly pursued. Human nature, of original conception, .yearns with a great common desire, to come where the name of Labour with all its shameful meaning and memory, can be excised from its suction-hold on mortal frailty, for ever. It is the iniquitous toll levied on the conquered brute, and side by side stand beast of burden and labourer. Of all the degenerate forces that abound to man's undoing, that of Labour is never optionally assumed by whole and free men ; and is by earliest and latest human instinct consistently shirked and shunned. For labour is pain : insidious and unconscious, acute or fell. Sweat of the brow and idleness are its true and spurious offspring. It is repellant to the divine reason and abhorred of all the loftier senses of the soul. Labour Day—travail of the curse. Verily it hath an unrighteous sound.