MILLS AND BENNETT IN CHRISTCHURCH.

Maoriland Worker, Volume 2, Issue 36, 10 November 1911, Page 13

MILLS AND BENNETT IN CHRISTCHURCH.

The "Unity" Scheme's Author, the Hub; The Scheme, a Hubbub.

Those who subscribed the modest "tanner" in order to hear the MillsBennett debate are not likely ,soon to forget their experiences. Although the audience was not a large one (sufficient only to pay rent and advertising) yet many hard and earnest fighters in the great cause of humanity were there. Mr. McCombs took the chair. "The Vag" acted timekeeper. The Chairman's speech of introduction was short, and Mills opened by requisitioning a blackboard and chalk. He produced a series of hieroglyphics, finishing up by sketching a wheel, periphery, spokes and hub. I have not found out yet even whether the periphery formed the unions and Mills the hub, or vice versa; certainly it seemed to mc that the "official organiser" of New Zealand's one and only possible "unity" scheme, if he were neither hub, periphery or spoke, must have for once lost his accustomed cuteness in advertisement. But it may be that the hub was a- hollow one, aud his.place was within, making the wheel go round —just as the white mouse does the juvenile menagerie cage kept by my boys in the back garden. At anyrate, the little gray man, iai gray, looked like earning his money as he wiped the artistic work off the board, placing it at rest for the remainder of the >. evening. The professorial explanation of the hub took just his ten minutes.: Bennett followed from the jump, and without glove's. Getting "The Struggle for Existence" in one hand and the "Unity" proposals in tlie other, he lashed out on compromise and the utter impossibility of achieving progress by such methods. His great point was that Socialists did know what their goal was, and they could not unite with people'who were making for a different one in another field. The emancipation of labor could not be brought about by such a team. The One Big Union and the one goal— the complete abolition of exploitation and the uselessness of the robbing mas-ter-class —was rubbed in by the Victorian, and the frequent bursts of applause proved that his blows were getting home. He made deadly use of Mills' book, and forcibly reminded his hearers thtft the-miners ,of the-West Coast, despairing -of anything being clone. by official Labor, took up and engineered successfully the formation of One Big Union o,u distinct aud clear lines, "the world for the workers." He also referred to the Hastings incident •■ arid.r<the franking of "Unity" circulars, well known to most of our readers. Mills, -on rising, denounced both Govenmieut and Opposition parties. He pointed to the pitiable spectacle- of one section of the workers warring against another section of its own class, and declared that only classconscious invorkors could emancipate Labor. .Turning to economics, he tried to show that ■■the more the worker got for his labor the less there was for rent, profit,;-.and .interest-mongers, forgetting' that-::she'h,;is an impossibility while -'production remains private property. ThVbird of freedom and its two spread .wings/: was referred to (as in Wellington Were Mills 'to get a-copy,pf ;the photograph of the Angel of by" a Waihi comrade, .he might have-a more striking illustration for the benefit of his Auckland; aV\dieHce. The .'remainder of the ; to a large extent a repetition. ; pf ,the Wellington ones. The combatants delighted the audience, and -.much propaganda for •Socialism was done night. Oh .the whole, I- cert'a|iiiy vgiye the honours to Victoria-, the>'■little"gray ; man in gray — J AMIESON.