AMALGAMATION.

Maoriland Worker, Volume 1, Issue 4, 15 December 1910, Page 2

AMALGAMATION.

Fob the advancement of the Labour Cause, whether as a matter of power or prestige, there is no means onehalf so effective as organisation. At present the adherents of the Cause in New Zealand are scattered and disunited, not merely geographically, but industrially. Hence they are unable 'to concentrate their strength in one given line of action when the need arises, and in times of industrial crises are at a serious disadvantage for this very reason alone. This disunion is all the more remarkable because, on general principles of economic development, there is very little real difference of opinion among the workers as a whole. Even on the question as to the best means to adopt for the immediate improvement of the conditions of the workers, the differences are more apparent than real. The delegates from the New Zealand Federation of Labour, at a recent conference held *n Christchurch, e.g., laid down their views clearly and explicitly in regard to the need for industrial organisation, but they did not exclude the desirability of political action, even at the present juncture. On the contrary, they assured the conference they would be only too glad to aid in the election campaign of any straight-out Labour candidate of whose loyalty to the Cause they were assured, and whose prospects of success seemed reasonably bright. But they felt that wholesale political action in New Zealand at the present would be disastrous to Labour, because of the disorganisation which abounds on all sides. These opinions, we take it. will be assented to by almost every thinking worker in New Zealand. But this assent carries with it an endorsement of the need of industrial organisation and amalgamation, as a preliminary to more extended operations, in the political sphere and elsewhere. Now, there is no movement which has ever been taken in recent years in the Labour world here which is so fraught with possibilities for a real and lasting solidarity as that by which it is hoped to bring about the union of the miners and the shearers in one strong and powerful industrial organisation. Not only does this union mean that men, whose very mode of life and habit of thought naturally render them comrades, will be within the fold of one association; but it means that these very men, by their united strength and capacity for co-opera-tion, will wield a mighty influence for good in the ranks of those of their fellow-workers who are weaker, financially, numerically, and even physically, and will encourage and sustain them in their battle for the betterment of all those conditions which make life worth living. It is no wonder, therefore, that the leaders, both amongst the miners and the shearers, are looking forward anxiously to the counting of the ballot next January. On the casting of that vote in favour of the shearers joining the miners, there will come into being the most powerful industrial organisation New Zealand has ever known, for when shearers and miners together hold out the hand of fellowship to waterside workers, it will aot be long before that Triple Alliance is an accomplished fact, and, we need hardly add, the farm-workers and the general labourers will not be so blind to their own interests, and to the interests of the great cause of Labour, as to remain outside the ranks of what will be, in name and in reality, The New Zealand Federation of Labour.