Page 9 Advertisements Column 2

Maoriland Worker, Volume 2, Issue 16, 23 June 1911, Page 9

happenings m Australia which led unions to, firstly, obtain "preference, " and, secondly, to close their unions to additional membership. People should come into unions because of conviction, and accepting certain principles as dearer than 11 unionism, too, should be open to all wage-earners. Anyway, to have unionism by law is certain to be as mischievous and tyrannical as dogma by law. And, unionists, we take it, prefer to r fly on the soundness of their cause instead of on coercion. Let us whisper sorrowifilly the tragedy of leaning upon a judicial junta. Owing to an Arbitration award —what irony in the term under the circumstances —brother unions have found themselves compelled to ''scab" upon the union forced out of employment. Arbitration proves a "solution.-" of difficulties by begetting a multiplied set of difficulties—a comparatively simple problem is rendered so complex as to confuse and confound the workingciass mimi. AAvay with itl

C>Y the end of next week Aye want to - a — 9 know if we can issue that one-hun-dred-thousand "Down with Conscription*' number. The requirement i« tne co-op-eration of our readers in financing the number. We asked for a thousand to prepay for 60 copies at Id each. Or failing 5s to send, something. Only tno&e wno endorse this paper s attitude are lifceiy to support the undertaking. JSlone oilier wfii. .the propaganua oy primers ink is the chief means whereby the people are to be awakened to tne horrors and treacheries of militarism.

ME. H. T. GIBSON, headmaster of the South School, Wailn, has offered a gold medal to the child avlio dishes up tho best essay on the "Union Jack," special reference to be made to tne privileges the children enjoy through'the hag's protection. This is done as "a protest against Mr. Parry's insult 10 tno liriutu iiag." Hoav about the teacher liimteii taking tip the pen on the Jack's behalf ? We A-enture to assert that he Avojud nave to search the uttermost recesses of nis brain for coiwineing argument. Why pass on to the pupil tnat which tne teacher is incapable of deng himsen V If Mr. Gibson can do Avhat he a-sxs tne children to clo, Ave'll be g'iad to hear from him. AnyhoAv, why should Mr. Gibson endeavour tc set Avoriiers' chuuren against Avorkers" mouthpiece in a critical period such as the present? Isn't it pretty loav tactics? Is Mr. Gibson tne mine managers' tool ?

LOOK you—in our Christian lands there is Avhclesale degradation of womanhood —prostitution is promoted; there is appalling juvenile depravity; there are slums —and worse; there are millions in. poverty, in semi-starvation, in semi-nudity, Avithout shelter. Under this vaunted system there is a percentage of human beings inexorably doomed — tlie girls to the street, the boys to the prison- this percentage is as ruthless as mathematics. There are men Avanting Avork, Avives wanting medicine, children Avanting life; the preventible infant death-rate is a thousandfold larger than the abortionists 1 victims, and Fate knows they are numerous enough. There are people sloAvly done to death by adulteration —of physic, of food, of exothing. There are—God curse us all for a mob of* Aveak dolts —there are crimes and miseries, wrongs and sufferings, enough to fill a WorkE-r. And ,the "shocked" Christians, in the name' of Jesus, have achieved nothing in curing social ills and inequalities—in abolisning tnese hiasses of festering rottenness. They do not knoAV how. They pray "Thy kingdom come"—and the answer is the terrifying "Jungle." They pray, "Lead, kindiy light," and 14 millions in Great Britain despair in the darkness of the povertyline. Let them not add to their criminal folly by blocking Socialism Avith their wastrel Aveapon of irreligion.

ALWAYS Avhen leadership bulks larger than a party, always Avhen an instrument toAvers mightier than its movement, always Avhen a creature leaps beyond the horizon of its creator, then, cA r er and always, the movement's danger-point is reached. This is ever the crisis of ominous portent, ever the labor Avhich will bring forth either weal or AA*oe. Here and now is that criteis in Australasian Laborism. Not the times but the parties are out of joint. Look Avhere we Avill, and side by side Ayith wonderful success are to be" noted unrest and friction and consuming ambition and fear in Labor circles. In AA-orkers' ranks a. battle proceeds fiercer, perhaps because more silent and intense, than that between workers and the open enemy—the battle "tAvixt the vanguard and the rear, 'tAvixt the militant and the timid. Being fought. noAv as ever, in the army who labor is fihat eternal conflict betAveen stagnation and movement. Because of the desire iorplace and poAver is seen the strong piaj of the forces of opportunism, expediency, and compromise, accompanied Avith but little of the iconoclasticism of straight-self-containment and emancipation. At such a period ever a danger-point is reached —for upon the issue depends the purity and stability of the Labor movement; upon it depends the triumph of reaction or progression, of the slumbersome or the ultimate. And e\*er the tendencies to l>e resisted are those Avhich make for the subordination of principles to personality, of honesty to apologetics, of courage to infirmity. There is peril to be discerned. Still, the more courageously and purposefully must the Avorkers grasp to themselv-es the central truth that for them economic justice alone matters. Socialism —Avork for it and be ready fo die for it, yet Jive for it. There sounds the call.