On the West Coast.

Maoriland Worker, Volume 3, Issue 78, 6 September 1912, Page 4

On the West Coast.

Travel Notes.

AT GREYMOUTH AND RUNANCA.

Travelling on the 'bus to tho West Coast on Saturday week were ten men, two women and some little children, driven from their homes at Kaitangata by th© grasping greed of the maawrclass at that village. These men and women are some of those who would not bow their necks to allow the mine lord to rivet more firmly their chains. Rather than submit to this degradation they sold up their homes, packed their blueys and sought fresh fields and pastures now. These men and women are the pick of Kaitangata, and comrades all over New Zealand 6hould lift their hats to these our mates whenever they meet them.

The slave owners of Kaitangata thmk they have killed the revolutionary spirit in that town, but they are making a mistake. They have only covered for a time, with a cloak of starvation, this fire. They will .find to their cost that it will go on smouldering, gathering energy and heat, and when they are least expecting it, it will break out again and in a more violent form. Kaitangata is a volcano, a sleeping volcano for the present, but still a dangerous one to the master-class. "Be yo also ready."

The same tactics adopted by the Kaitangata slave-drivers are being adopted by the slave-drivers of Greymouth. Any man known to favor the Federation of Labor is laying himself open to the same form of victimisation. The cowardly crew who were willing to use the funds that had been contributed by the colliers and the bottom-dogs of this country to Becure better conditions for themselves, and when those had been secured and when they thought the ship was in trouble, deserted are helping these slave-drivers in their deadly work. But a day of reckoning is coming for these animals, and their aqueal will be heard all over the Pacific. The masterclass has always been -able to buy the services of one lot of slaves to keep tho other slaves in subjection.

Glorious anti-military meeting held at Runanga on Sunday week—big audience and full of enthusiasm. The rulingclass little dreamt, when it put upon the Statute Book of this Dominion the Defence Act, that it was going to be the means of manufacturing more rebels to the square inch than any other Act it has forced on a good-natured, happy-go-lucky community. In Christchurch we have dozens of boys whe a few months ago would have been almost prepared to have committed suicide rather than have had to face an audience on a public platform, yet to-day those boys are prepared to go anywhere and to face anyone in defence of their liberties. The same thing applies to Runanga and other places. It was indeed an inspiration to an old warrior who had become somewhat flat to hear these boys on the public platform on Sunday evening dealing with the iniquities of tihe Conscription Act. Godley and all his crew could not produce so much manliuesa and self-reliance, with months of deadly-dull routine in the drill ground given in. And those boys' "What oil!" will bo remembered for years by those people who were present at that meeting.

Tho policemun's life is not supposed to be a happy one, and I can safely say the life of an ordinary garden kind of labor agitator is also not a happy one. There are thousands of unpaid-I'or hours being devoted to the wage-slaves of this country. 1 journeyed with two other comrades up to what is known as "the Extension," just outside Runanga, and only those who have done the trip know of tho many delights one experiences. At the end of the trip one is so overjoyed at the fact that he has not broken his neck that he forgets the six weary miles. I have journeyed into many funny places to catch an audience to try and carry tho message of Socialism, but I don't think I ever went over six miles of country before without seeing somo of it. But on this trip all my attention was centred on railway sleepers, hopping from one to another like a blooming mosquito sampling the blood of some new chum. Some of those sleepers were greasy, some wet and some far apart, but we got there, had a good meeting and met) some good fellows who are paying their 10 per cent, to the strike fund without knowing until now the real cause of the trouble —but they know their class was in trouble, and that was their trouble. — THE VAG.

No revolution ever rises above tho intelectual levei of those who make it, and little is gained where one false notion supplants another. But we must some day, at last and forever, cross the line between nonsense and common sense. And on that day we shall pass from class paternalism, originally derived from fetish fiction in times of universal ignorance, to human brotherhood, in accordance with the nature or things and our growing knowledge of it; from political government to industrial administration; from competition in individualism to individuality in cooperation; from war and! despotism in any form, to peace and liberty.— Thomas Carlylo.