World of Work.

Maoriland Worker, Volume 2, Issue 17, 30 June 1911, Page 6

World of Work.

Notes on Labor at Home and Abroad Collated by BLOCHAIRN.

The evolution of industry and the natural sequence to a competitive system are not confined to Britain and America. If one looks into any industrial country, occidental or oriential, he will find exactly the same forces a*, work with precisely the same effects, the difference in wages being merely a difference of amount and not of purchasing power. The returns given for any one country in regard to wages and cost of living, without substantial relatiye changes, can be applied to all otner countries. Out of some three hundred and fifty-eight trades recorded in the United States there are only five or six left in which women are not employed. The pay of men employed on the private railways of the United Kingdom is given in a monthly return printed by the Board of Trado* The

figures affect 109,020 railway men of all grades. These worked altogether 2,676,189 days, On 29,369 <-f these days the time worked was in excess of 12 hours by one hour or upward, the men in many cases having to resume duty with less, and often much less, than nine hours' rest. In this respect the railway workers of New Zealand are better off chiefly owing to "public ownership." The moral, therefore, is more public ownership. In 1907 the manufacturers of Australia employed 250,000 men, women, and children. These by their labour power added to the - wealth of the community a value equal to £35,000,-------000. For producing that amount of wealth the workers received in wages £18,300,000, or £73 per head for that year. The employers took as their share £16,700,000 — a sum equal to 33 per cent, upon the value of the plant, the land and buildings used in pro-

duction. John Bright, in a delivered at Manchester in 1860, said : "It has never been proved that strikes are bad. A strike is the reserve power in the hand of tho Working-class. I would tell workingmen never to surrender their rights to combine with their fellows in support of their rights." And John wasn't a Revolutionist ! Statements to the effect that unem-

ployment in Milwaukee has grown since that city passed into the control of the Socialists are at present going the rounds of our New Zealand papers. These are scissored for American capitalist papers which have waded in a sea of calumny against Milwaukee for the purpose of damaging, an then could, Socialism and embarrassing Milwaukee . Socialist Council. The "St. Louis Republic" had it in big type across its front page that "80,000 men are idle in Milwaukee." Instead of which "The Evening Wisconsin," a privately owned paper, in denouncing the campaign of lies which unscrupulous newspapers were indulging in against Milwaukee, among other things' says: "The manager of a large downtown retail establishment assured our reporter that

from personal knowledge he could say the condition among the vo - k ng people of Milwaukee to-day is better than it was a year ago." A pamphlet has been distributed in Great Britain explaining the situation in Nova Scotia, where the miners have been on strike for close on two years. The strikers are fighting for the recognition of their Union, for a wage scale agreement and for the payment of coal per ton instead of per box, and for a fairer docking system. A "Trade Union" for the Roman Catholic workmen of South London has been formed. One of its objects is "to protest against the proposal to introduce secular education into denominational schools." Ye Gods and little fishes I