A CONSTITUTION.

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

A CONSTITUTION.

There seems to be in some quarters a little misapprehension as to the Constitution of the New Zealand Federation of Labour—a misapprehension which the Federation's delegates at the recent conference did their best to dispel. " Our Constitution is not perfect," they said in so many words; " it is not unalterable like the laws of the Medes and Persians ; on the contrary, it is open to improvement at each annual conference, and, if need be, to review; certainly we hold true always to the vital principles on which it is based, and were these principles discarded and the Constitution reversed or devitalized, there would be immediate and inevitable secessions; but we welcome any suggestions for improvement, and gladly embody these in the Constitution from year to year." No position could be fairer. And in order that the shearers should be ahle to know thoroughly the general principles adopted by the Federation, the Constitution is being published from month to month in " The Maoriland Worker." That Constitution sets out clearly and unmistakably the general trend of €hought among its framers— a trend with which the shearers are, indeed, in warm sympathy, and wherever it is open to improvement in the matter of details, this improvement can be effected at annual conference by the aid of the shearers themselves. The element of growth is there in the Constitution, and no restrictions of any kind have been placed upon its opportunities for expressing the fullest measure of economic and industrial development.