Paid Agitators.

Maoriland Worker, Volume 3, Issue 86, 1 November 1912, Page 4

Paid Agitators.

THE WORTH OF SEMPLE.

THE PARSON'S MINIMUM

Whenever there is industrial trouble we hear a good deal about the paid agitator. Unthinking people think they think he is the cause of all the trouble. A skilful doctor never takes the outward sign for the inward cause. He looks deeper.

The ordinary pressman, the editor, those who stand on the platform and pulpit, denounce the men who are fighting for their fellow-workers as "paid agitators," "mischief-makers," etc. and their qualifying objections are strong in proportion to the weakness of their knowledge and brains.

Let the agitntor but change sides, and the demagogue becomes an orator.

It is time this cant and misrepresentation about the champion of the work-ing-class ceased. Every person, every lawyer, every temperance lecturer, or speaker on any subject who takes a fee is a paid agitator. True, there is a aifferenee. The members of the-work-ing-class who become spokesmen for their fellows are generally forceful and often picturesque speakers. They certainly earn to the full the title of "agitator." They do agitate. The difference between them and their opponents is they succeed in agitating the people, including the newspapers and pulpits, while tho agitators on the other side seldom agitato either themselves or others. The real difference is the working-class agitators are good agitators, who are poorly paid, and the others are poor agitators who are well and very often overpaid.

A great- outcry was raised in New Zealand recently when the balancesheet of the N.Z. Federation of Labor was published in the newspaper, and it was discovered that Organiser Bob Sample received £4 a week. Archbttihop Clarke thinks four or five pounds a week is the absolute minimum for a parson, and for himself he would be insulted if offered three times that sum. Yet a man like Somple is worth more to the workers of New Zealand than all the parsons in the Dominion put together.

The licensed victuallers have engaged a paid agitator at nearly four times the amount, and it seems to be quite right to engage a man to show how to sell more drink and to make more profit to the corresponding injury of the people. Ho is not going to try to get more of their products for the workers who produce all wealth. Quite the contrary. Tho advocates of Bible-teaching have engaged Canon Garland to "agitate" for Bible-teaching in schools. Of course, he will be paid, and it is not likoly (heir will be published in the newspapers, or the amount received by this paid ngitator made public, with unfavorable comments thereon. —''Socialist" (Mell).).