Semple, Richards and Fagan at Ngakawau

Maoriland Worker, Volume 3, Issue 87, 8 November 1912, Page 8

Semple, Richards and Fagan at Ngakawau

PERTINENT POINTS.

MAN OR MACHINE?

On a recent Sunday almost every man, woman and child in tho district constituted a record public meeting in McNarn's Hall, to hear the plain, unvarnished truth concerning the industrial troubles at Waihi and Reefton.

Mr. RICHARDS, from Waihi, was the first called upon by the chairman (Mr. D. Alexander) and his simple and unostentatious demeanor at once won for him the rivetted attention of the audience. He quietly depicted the conditions obtaining in Waihi previous to the p.drent of the Federation of Labor, and impressively showed how in tho dark recesses of the bowels of the earth much treasure was won for dividends, while men toiled and struggled against each other under the death-dealiug competitive system, which they had since discarded for the co-operative contract system, which the mine-owners were now struggling by all the most detestable means conceivable to supplant by the old cutthroat system. Through lack of economic power and a farcical Arbitration Court little or nothing could bo done to better condition? until the Federation of Labor came to the rescue, since when conditions had considerably improved. Then the mine-owners saw the Federation grow in strength and utility in the interests of the workers, but detrimental to dividends, and it was decided that the Federation must die.

The health of the miner was not for the mine-owners to consider when that health stood in the way of dividends, even although those dividends might be deep-dyed and blood-stained.

Dealing with the police persecution at Waihi.. Mr. Richards said that everything pointed to tho police and magistrate acting under special instructions and 'no ono who was cognisant of the position could possibly come to any other conclusion. The magistrate complimented tho men on their good conduct, said they had committed no crime, didn't want them to go to jail, and at the same time asked them to brand themselves as criminals by finding sureties to keep the peace. Such law had never been heard of. and would probably never be heard of again in "God's Own Country" after the political demise of the Massey party.

MARK FAGAN was the nest speaker, and his story—struggle and death in the -Heefton mines—was pathetic in the extreme. He said the Reefton miners had been under the Arbitration Court for 14 years, and during all that time they had fulfilled the provisions of the awards to the letter. He referred to the evil efFect of the contract system unon the lives and health of the miners; to unreasonable specifications which the company tried to force upon them, and the hardship of having to forfeit deposits to the value of £89, Repealed efforts had been made to cause a general strike by ordering coal which was really not required from various places where it was thought the miners would refuse to cut it, and when it was found that the miners intended to cut the coal if necessary aud devote the mon<\v earned to their fighting fund the order wns quickly cancelled. If a general strike did eventuate the Federation would be pretty certain to have howls of indignation hurled at it by tho general public, though in reality the Federation was trying sincerely to avoid as much friction as Dossibla

An endeavor had been made hy the Consolidated Company at Reefton to commandeer a poor old Italian while under the influence of drink and induce him to proceed to his native land to secure miners for the Reefton field, but the effort proved unsuccessful. It could be seen that no action was considered too despicable for the mineowners in the present crisis to resort to in their vain endeavor to win a fight which from tho first was unjustifiable on their part.

Mr. SEMPLE spoke of the class war being waged throughout the world, the concentration and power of wealth and as a result the blood tax being paid by the wage-slave. In America two of their class were now in what might prove the death chamber for having clone nothing but attempt to better the conditions of oppressed humanity, which had apparently now become an unpardonable crime in the eyes of the niastor-clnss; who fought strenuously to keep them in the chains of bondage. It almost appeared that tho vaunted boast of free speech was threatened in different parts of the world, as indeed it appeared to be in this affectionately designated "God's Own Country." Efforts in that direction might be made but it might as easily bo expected that the advance of an incoming tide of the ocean could be stayed. Although a rock-bound shore may snv in effect to the ocean—"this far shalt thou come and no further," no power on earth can issue that command to the workers of the world and reasonably expect it te be obeyed. The economic power of the workers was sweeping over the world at a highly appreciable pace for the workers and to the grim chagrin and dismay of the capitalist slave-owner.

A great commotion had been caused by a report that; a person called King had said it would be a ren<sonable thins: if anyone fiboufrht a machine was <roing tn kill him. to kill the machine. Manr human machines now lay in the Reefton cemetcrv. killed by mechanical machines owned by tho mine-owners, but no word of -protest had ever been forthcoming from nress, pulpit, or politician, thrt'unbolv trirnV nlb'nnco whir-h lias always stood steadfastly to the cause of murdering capitalism. The.sn human machines who go down to death in unspeakable agonies enst nothing and ha\ r e been easily replaced. The mine-ownor may pump quartz dust— analogous to the emery of the King opised°—into the lungs of the strongest, and best of th« country's manhood, but there is no riitying ere to note the failing strength, the death strngede for breath, tho look of anguish r+ having in nart with loved ones rnrnrnvidod for : and no ear to hear the sobs and moans and prayers of n loving wifa, or the d.-iddv?" of the fathpTWs children. If the graves in the Reefton pprnoferv of those who have been dono to death by miners' complaint which dtp only marked by an uncared-for mound of parth. were marked by tombstones sotting forth the causo of death, it would ho the most striking testimony to the great sacrifice of life in tho hunt for the yellow metal that puts more wealth into the coffers of the alrendv rich. Actual, brutal to hundreds of human kind has become no «in, while a mere suggestion of death to a machine which causes these deaths is apparently an outrage.

Three cheers for the men and women of Waihi and Reeftxm and Bob Scrapie, and the passing of a resolution protesting against the flooding of Waihi by the police, the \mjustifiable jailing of the miners at Waihi and n demand for their release, terminated an enthusiastic meeting.—KENNETH ROSS.