Auckland and its "Voice."

Maoriland Worker, Volume 3, Issue 78, 6 September 1912, Page 2

Auckland and its "Voice."

Libeller.

Dynamite and its Recipe.

BERGER AND GUNS.

WORDS TO TRAMWAYMEN

Recently every traiuwayman in Auckland received at his private address, per the postal service, a large sheet headed in big letters, ''The Voice of Labor" —"Special Anti-strike Edition."

The contents of this sheet are of the usual anti-working-class type, hashed up again and again by tihe so-colled Labor paper.

The question naturally arises: Where did this so-called Labor paper receive the addresses from? One u:un suggested that, the Directory had been used, but that cannot be so, lor the Directory contains only names and addresses of householders, and LS per cent, of the tramwaymen who rcoived circulars are not on the directory at all. Another suggestion was fhat the addresses had been culled from the parliamentary or city roll, but flint suggestion is proved to be wrong, because an employee of Dutch extraction, who is not naturalised, and consequently is not on the roll, also received a circular. That argument is consequently squashed.

Neither the Tramways Union nor the Tramways Sick and Accident Society possesses addresses of all its members; therefore, there is no leakage on this side.

Whence the addresses? iJie head office of the Auckland Electric Tramways Company. The proof! Yes, men have been ask«d recently ly depot officers if they still live at tho snme address (tho company always keeps a list) of addresses). And evidence No. 2 —a certain motonnan with an awkward name to spell received his circular, and his name was spelt wrongly, but exactly in the same way as the depot cfiicer always spells :t.

The long and short of the wiiclo f.ffair is that the paper, which ;s as useful to the employing class as it is execrated by the workin.n-clivjs, is the willing tool of the big financiers and commercial cabals who lo.un large' behind the Waihi mine, the A.E. Tramway Co., and many other concerns in New Zealand.

The one organisation feared in New Zealand by these mdiv'.dnais is t-bat militant organisation known as the Federation of Labor. Their one ambition is to overthrow it. They tried by creating blackleg unions and lookouts to burst Ihc power and brotherhood if tho Federation. They have ia-'serably failed in their alt-tempts, which have crly brought the fighting arms of the workers more and more together in a common fight, and broken off the dead and useless limbs which are always hindrances to working-class action.

Their paper (and it cannot be condemned for its consistency) has fought the F.L. malignantly. It has boosted up the Reform Party and in the last political campaign the demagogues who run it went out of their way to publish in the "Herald" a long tirade against the Liberal Government. Ad their own expense? This paper upheld C. J. Parr's candidature in the mayoral election, and published long leaflets subversive of Labor organisation and of its principles. At whose expense? It then engaged Walter Thomas Mills as editor, and used tho space after he had finished his editorials in adoring adulation of his "oratory" and inveterate ambition to "do." But time went on, and things did not run smoothly, so one day W.T. packed his portmanteau and leaving his prohibitionist principles in the "Voice" office, he departed for the Empire City to edit the Labor Page of a Liberal paper said to be owned chiefly by the brewing fraternity.

Lately the "Voice" has changed its appearance, in order to attract the kindly attention of the employers of Auckland, and now no merchant's desk in Auckland is complete without its copy of tihe "Voice." Who pays the bill? We will leave the workers of New Zealand to judge for themselves whether the Tramway Unionists of Auckland were circularised out of generosity. Even the most backward unionists know where the addrosses came from ,and who paid for the postage. The most profitable business in the world is that of fighting revolutionary unionism.

It is devilish

Tramway Circularised—The Answer to the

Of course, the "Voice" didn't publish that of the much-vaunted leader of the Wisconsin S.D. And the Federation of Labor has not proposed anything half so drastic.

The "Voice" deprecates the right to have free spceoh, which is one of the essentials of progress. It lies about the organisation of the 1.W.W., which it insists upon as being out for nothing but- general strikes; it misrepresents and maligns, and is nothing more nor less than the hireling and treacherous tool of a class which for centuries has ruled and robbed the working-class.

But the intelligent worker knows its career, its sponsors, and its buyers; even the reactionary Trades and Labor Council has withdrawn its name from its pages. It is the Voice of the Jackal, suaihiia and snapping for the bones, which its Pigott treachery has bought for it. Let the workers move onward, let them heed neither hirelings nor their press. The Federation admittedly is not all to be desired. Let us build and rebuild, never taking our eyes from the goal, nor from the symbol of the locked hands of industrial and international solidarity—when the under-dogs, by the growth and dissemination of education, shall revolt against the hells of the past, and move towards that evergrowing perfection of body and of intellect, when the race will be free and Man, the triumph of the centuries, shall come into his own. Hail for brotherhood I -■—

Now then, workers- of Auckland, especially tramwaynien, your employers want you to leave the Federation. Why?' Because between the Federation and yourselves you can defeat them; separated they can defeat you I one at a time.

) Take no notice of lying, unscrupulous, I idiotic articles iuspired by the creatures who adore the favors of their masters—who would try to lull the soliduriuy of the workers into a, death sleep, who. attempt, to create division, who howl traitorously about threats and boycotts and strikes.

Workers, if the ballot is the only way aud the best way to achieve emancipation —why, in the name of comrnonsense, have you had to organise your unions? Voting is easier than organisation—why didn't you vote? Because the ballot-box is useless without the organised MIGHT behind it. ORGANISE yourselves on a class basis, and the most conservative or tyrannic governments must climb down when your industrial organisation demands it.

The laws of the future are not going to be made in the gilded halls of class parliaments, but in the national and international conferences of the workers in industry, who shall control democratically their own affairs and own, socially, the fobs in which they work.

Tho circular referred to is headed: "Syndicalist Tyranny and Terrorism in Waihi." "'Anarchism or the State." "Who governs Xew Zealand?" and bow-wows of that variety. It publishes for about the tenth time the recipe for making dynamite, and howls against the iniquity of the Wouker in- publishing an editorial upon the Chicago Anarchist martyrs.

Says tho '"Voice": "They haven't used dynamite yet, but they will do it." Evidently the recipe hasn'l) been noticed yet. Then the "Voice" tilts at the Honndsditch affair and the Bonnot incident, and with its unfailing power of deduction, tells of the men from the wet village of Runanga who are graduating in that direction.

Next it deals with Victor Berger's speech on Anarchism at Indianapolis at the Labor (Labor, mind you, not Socialist) Party's conference.

Now, it is a remarkable thing that Victor L. Bergcr is not- any more consistent than his commender, for in an editorial in his own paper ("Milwaukee Social-Democratic Herald," July 31. 1909) he said: "Each of the 500,000 Socialist votes and of the 2,000,000 working-men who instinctively incline our way. should, beside much reading and still more thinking, also have a good rifle and the necessary rounds of ammunition in his home, and be prepared to back up iris ballots with his bullets if necessary."