Ashburton Notes.

Maoriland Worker, Volume I, Issue 6, 20 February 1911, Page 17

Ashburton Notes.

Dear Editor, —As to Ashburton., I can tell you that the farmers about here are sound on the labour goose, and that the working man is a Simple Simon Gazabo, who talks like this about his boss, a man who frequently is no better than himself : "No pride about him: he will speak to you and take a drink out of your billy as if he was one of ourselves." I hope you will do your best to knock spots out of that old worm-eaten lie—the harmony of interest between Labour and Capital. All I can tell you about the cockies is that they are slave-drivers, that their accommodation is generally an old shed, or a loft of a stable, where you are regaled by the perfume of horse manure. The Accommodation Act is inoperative, and might as well be wiped off the law books. Nearly all the Labour laws are in a mordant state under the rotten Ward Government. Please show that fakir up. They are afraid to offend the farmers, who are all Tories to a man, and supporters of old Aunt Massey's Deform Party. I hope that Ward will be ground to powder at the next election. The whole country out here is covered with weeds., tares, briars, gorse, etc., enough to employ the entire adult population to clear. The Noxious Weeds Act is a farce. It is not enforced at all. I send you another subscription. It doesn't matter to mc who controls the paper. 1 glory in the Miners' Federation, who have had the grit to pull out from under the Arbitration Act, which is no use to us. Can't you do something to heal the breach in the ranks of Labour? I suggest that you put forward the following compromise, which is honourable to all parties cojicerned : — The consolidation of the rival Federations of Labour—that organised by Mr. Semple with the one organised by Mr. McLaren; a combination of Industrial Unionism, with immediate political action, by an Independent Labour Party; advocate a Trades' Dnion Congress, and the formation of a Labour Representation Committee. Unity, both in industrial and political matters, is absolutely essential. Without it the cause is lost. But I fear I am boring you, so I again salute you as the only editor of the best paper in New Zealand, but you are a better editor than all the indiarubber scribes on the capitalist rags pressed into one. Long may you reign !—Yours, etc., AN ASHBURTON WORKER.