In Our Opinion

Maoriland Worker, Volume 2, Issue 2, 8 December 1911, Page 11

In Our Opinion

IN the daily papers of Wednesday of last week appeared the following distressing cable :—"Paris, November 27. IQClxe well-known Socialist, M. Paul Lafargue, and his wife, committed suicide. ffhe latter is a daughter of Karl Marx, ithe Socialist. Lafargue was threateiiicd with paralysis. M. Marx's other daughter formerly committed suicide in England." We await with sorrowful eagerness the receipt of further particulars. In all probability it will be found &hat the deliberate choice of death was Boot due to either domestic or financial trouble, for Lafargue's marriage is said to lie among the happiest. In the case Of Marx's "other daughter" marriage .was a tragedy. Eleanor Marx Aveling was a great woman, as was Mrs. La- / fargue, her sister. Paul Lafargue was Ixwrn. at Santiago, Cuba, in 1842. He studied medicine in Paris, and in 1871 took part in the celebrated Commune, and afterwards fled to Spain and England. Here he married a daughter of ■Karl Marx. In 1880, with Guesde, he Organised 'Carxian Socialism in France. Tie was Imprisoned in 1883 .and again in 1891, but was liberated on being elected to the Assembly from OLilie. He wrote voluminously, among liis best-known books "The Right io bo Lazy," "Socialism a".nd the Intellectuals/ and " Social and Philosophical Studies." "The Sale of an Appetite," by Lafargue, is one of the world's greatest satires (review next week). She international movement will be the poorer by his loss. « G CA. ROTH, of Palmerston North, has been writing to the local press, (pointing out that the Borough Council's street sweepers' gang only receive 25f1. a week for 48 hours' work. In reply, tho "Standard" says that the men., who get from 255. to 305., are arnderrate workers, employed under perunit from the Government, and the Istreet-swoeping is. in the nature of relief work for those not competent to team ordinary day wages. The Work was given to old men, who could do it though not able to .earn &. living at other employment owiitg to physical unfitness. This reply did not 'satisfy Roth, who vigorously fe> the a-fvbi-f'.k- an A was advised by; the , \

" Standard" to induce the electors to place him in the BoroUgh Council. And a good, suggestion, too. Socialists in New Zealand could do good work on local bodies, and expose such shameless sweating of old men, because they are old men and unable to do so much work as young men. In a sane and civilised society these veterans of labor, who have borne the heat and burden of the day, would be under no necessity to toil, let alone be compelled to accept "relief work" under conditions unfair to them and disgraceful to the community. -ft THE "Barrier Daily Truth" is a class-conscious organ, which is not afraid to act up to its title. Recently "Truth" had something valuable to say on the subject of strikes. Here are a few paragraphs : —' 'Even in this State, with a Labor Government in nominal control, there are men languishing in jail for strike offences, and more than one hundred others who possibly will bo sent to jail for non-payment of fines. The employers, whose profit-making is interrupted; the politicians, who delight to air themselves at the silvertails' garden parties ; and the traitorous Labor "leaders" subserviently _ humbling themselves before Boodle —in fact, all of the enemies of Labor —dislike strikes, and endeavour to persuade workers from 'downing tools' to enforce their rights, and if organised Labor rejects their worthless advice, all of them combine to break strikes by means of ibatbns, bayonets, scabs, and jails. . . . The importance of the workers retaining the right to strike cannot be overestimated. Whilst admitting that it is a weapon that should be handled with great discreion, and used sparingly— for frequent use impairs its efficiency— it is too valuable to be lost. All of 'Barrier Daily Truth's" working-class exchanges emphasise the necessity of the retention of the right to strike, and no union official of any character and of any prominence in the world denies that strikes are the most effective engines in the union armoury. When the best and most enlightened exponents of working-class organisation acknowledge their adhesion to the strike, when our own experience tells us. that better conditions and increased wages in most instances can be obtained only by 'downing tools,' and when the. bosses are so eager to make strikes unlawful, it belibves the unionists to disregard the after-dinner meanderings of dilettante politicians." £ A CURIOUS effect of sea travel was <-*• related by Mr. J. W. G. Patterson, a Wellington elder attending the Presbyterian Assembly in Dunedin. He stated that amongs the immigrants arriving ■by every Home steamer there were many Presbyterians, and the six weeks at sea had the demoralising < ffect of destroying their religious sense. They did not go to church here,' though they came of godly parents. "You can have no idea," said the informant, ''unless you have spent six weeks in the steerage of a steamer, how demoralising an effect it has:" Mr. Paterson was quite serious, adds the Dunedin "Star" Which merely proves that the so-called "religious sense" was an artificial sentiment and not a natural one. . & TN a lecture at Christchurch on -*- Eugenics, Mrs. Carrington, a Socialist, asked who were "the fittest." She answered her own question by defining "the fittest" as "those who could adapt themselves to their envirolnmont." But if the environment be bad, those who ladapt themselves to it must be'the worst as well as the "fittest." That is precisely what happens to-day under our vicious, unsocial system. Change environment so that the fittest shall be the best—s . . " OCTOPUS," in the "O.D. Times," **--' referring to the suggestion that fares and freights may have to be raised in consequence of the increase in seamen's wages, writes that "surely the Union Steamship Company, which has built up a hige reserve fund and distributes large dividends and bonuses, has not the audacity to exploit its patrons further." "Octopus" ought to know that audacity and worse vices are good business assets. The "huge taxing machine," as the late T. E. Taylor remarked, has no conscience. It sold out conscience long ago. having no use for it in business. The Union Ship Swindling Company will continue to exploit its patrons just so long as they let it.

rgIHE world is a large place, and con- -*- tains more than one kind of man. So said Robert Blatchford, and the truth of the statement has never been denied. It was hard to believe that the collar-and-cuff-wearing wage-slaves of Auckland had gone back so far on their traditions as to form a union, but following on that surprise comes another. At a meeting recently the clerks of the wholesale and fancy goods houses passed this resolution : —"That this meeting of the clerical staffs of wholesale soft goods and fancy goods warehouses is strongly opposed to the demands issued by the united clerks of Auckland, and resents any attempt to compel us to come under the scope of the union." Contented, blissful wageslaves ! —4 \ FOR nineteen hundred years the ideal of the Christian world has been the final triumph of moral motives over bodily appetites in the control of human conduct. —Sir Arthur Clay. It is still an ideal, but what have the churches done to make it a fact? The Socialists alone have endeavoured to make the ideal practical.