Flings at Things.

Maoriland Worker, Volume 2, Issue 75, 16 August 1912, Page 1

Flings at Things.

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"Busybodies." That's the word None more fitting could have been applied.

Parry "rang the bell" by so describing those two dear innocent gentlemen, Triggs and Hally, Conciliation Commissioners.

Who were sent by a paternal Government to view the landscape at Waihi.

How apt did Parry hit 'em off. How crushing was his rejoinder. "Busybodiee" was neat. But "agitators in,the service of the State" was neater.

They saw things, did Triggs and Hally.

They sketched "the scenes of the strike and the sights they saw with a realism really remarkable.

Then they painted the picture with a whitewash brush, and laid the colors on good and thick.

And what a drab and dismal daub of desolation was the result.

'Twas overdrawn and colored with the colors of gloom and despair.

Parry's picture, sombre enough in some details, is a truer and brighter presentment.

Golden glsams of humor, rosy rays of brightness, and glinting sparks of hope and cheer flash athwart the canvas.

And high in the heavens, piercing the clouds, shines the glorious sun. of Solidarity.

Triggs and Hally see little chance of the strike being ended while funds are available for the strikers. There's only one thing to be "did." Strike pay will have to be cut off vt any cost. The miners must be starved into submission. All contributors to the fighting fund will have to be placed in tho pillory, stuck in the stocks, or hung high on the gallows-tree at the cross-roads. As a warning to all who would aid and abet the workers in their fight for freedom. X * « Tlie "City Desolate." "Waihi's Transformation." "From Prosperity to Poverty." What a wail of woe about Waihi. The .Conciliation Commissioners were first in the field with a dirgeful duet. The papers took up the chorus of lachrymose lamentation with raucous voices that sounded like a Wellington southerly whistling through a keyhole.

Then a man in Christchureh .fpllowed with a solo bleat that rose in%renzy till it was like the shriek of a lost soul lib would be almost impossible to conceive of any town being ruined to a greater extent than Waihi had been.

It was at present held by some 200 Socialists—Anarchists, he called them —and these men controlled everything.

They Jiad pickets who dogged the footsteps of all strangers to the town.

If anyone rose at any of their meetings to suggest that a secret ballot should be taken as to whether the men should resume work, the proposer would be howled down.

If a man offended the committee in any way he was put on the black-list and his strike pay stopped.

Storekeepers who displeased the strike committee were boycotted, and many had been ruined.

Out of about 1500 miners Waihi used to possess, about 900 had left the township, and an air of desolation pervaded the place.

The engineers were forced to carry revolvers, and they wgtq "boo-hooed" as they went along the street.

Woeful Waihil

The "West Coast Times," discussing politics, prints the comment that there will be some wonderful awakenings in the future.

Mr. Seddon, in particular, will suffer a rude awakening.

He will wake up and realise that he is a member of a "discredited, beaten, and disgruntled party."

. While the.man to whom he referred as a "road board politician" is the "capable, conscientious and beloved" Prime Minister of New Zealand. "Beloved" Bill! How does that strike you ? Rich, isn't; it?

There was a boycott in Christclmrch the other day, but the press didn't work itself up into a fever of frenzy regarding it.

It wasn't a boycott by the workers, but a professional boycott by the local toothsmiths.

The "etiquette of the dental profession" was responsible therefoT.

It had been dragged in the mire, or something to that effect.

Dr. Paterson, of the Flat City, had been advertised to give a lecture, and an audience had assembled to hear it.

At the last moment, however, the lecture had to bo abandoned owing to the Association withholding its permission.

"Dentistis* Ethics" are queer things —likewise lawyers' and medical men's.

If the interests of Labor and Capital are identical, why is it necessary to organise unions to protect the interests of the worker?