Waihi Impressions

Maoriland Worker, Volume 3, Issue 92, 20 December 1912, Page 8

Waihi Impressions

HOW THE PLACE LOOKS.

AT THE COURT.

THE LESSON OF IT ALL

By "THE REBEL."

After nearly two months' enforced absence from Waihi, of which one month was spent in Mt. Eden jail (one of "God's Own Country's" homes for instructing us how to become less rebellious and more law-abiding), "The Rebel" returned to Waihi last week.

On stepping from the train and proceeding towards the town, one is struck by the almost unearthly quietness that pervades the place. True, the smoke from the slave-owners' stacks still mounts skywards, and the oreiadeni train still shriekingly proceeds to Waikino; but something of the life and; bustle of a mining field is missing. It is plainly evident that the parrot slogan of the Scabatrationist about "bringing back the good old times" is a very futile one at present.

Numbers of empty houses are to be seen everywhere, and the express carriers appear to be doing a profitable trade in carrying away departing miners' furniture to the railway station. The business folk are complaining bitterly at seeing so many old customers leaving the town, but their cup of bitterness is doomed to be filled more ere long. The Union Jack and red, white, and blue emblems are a most conspicuous feature in Waihi nowadays. Even little toddling children, may bo seen carrying half a yard or so of an alleged "flag of freedom" on a stick, while patriotic robbers look on with beaming smiles of approval. During the recent court proceedings, the writer saw police (better known to militant wage-slaves as "scab guardians") wearing red, white and blue rosettes, and one bluecoated member of the pimp profession had sweet peas so arranged in his bustonhole as to represent the scab emblem of red, white and blue, the "official" color of the Waihi scab con6ern and its sycophantic supporters.

Another very noticeable feature was the familiar manner in which certain of the more hrazen and shame-devoid scabs frequent the court and hang around the doorways of the institution where justice is generally supposed to be impartially dispensed. The elongated Maori who rejoices in the sobriquet of "Tlie Snake-charmer" sprawls his carcase right across the doorway leading into the courtroom, and it was a sorry spectacle to see th© way some of the police passed through the doorway so as not to disturb the comfortable position of their comrade in strike suppressing. Waihi has afforded many instances of the class struggle to hundreds of wageBlaves who refused to acknowledge this inevitable struggle prior to the strike. The jury composed of business men, correspondents of labor-hating capitalist dailies sitting as J.P.s hearing strike prosecutions, sharebrokers writing accounts of the strike for the great public (which, unfortunately, believes them), strikers thrown into jail for fear they might commit a breach of the capitalistic peace, while the master's degraded scabs go scot free after committing burglary, violence of a most debased order, intimidation, insulting women and hy their savage actions causing premature births and miscarriages to several strikers' wives. It is only on the narrowest of chances that some' of the scab contingent are not standing in the dock to-day charged with murder and such charge may possibly be made ere tihis damnable episode closes.

The orgy that took place in Waihi on November 12 can, unfortunately, never he fully realised by those who did not witness that expression of police-ap-proved and newspaper-supported "law and order." Cullen was given a free hand to settle tne strike, and the way it was acted upon will be a reproach for all time to the Massey Government. Cullen and his sycophantic slops have been fawned upon and slobbered over by the master-class and its satellites for his "tact" and "impartiality." The "tact" of Cullen would be a disgrace to the rawest recruit in the force, while his "impartiality" may be gauged from the press report of the scab delegate wowser Foster's speech in Hamilton, when he said Commissioner Cullen recommended to the mining companies to resume operations in the mines!" How is that for impartiality, ye deluded and duped wage-slaves? Mr. Cotter, K.C., said in court that if "something had not been done the Federation would have been successful in the strike." That "something" WAS DONE and is known all over Australasia to-day, and viewed from ■ class-strugßle standpoint, the masterclass was justified in all it did and in all it can do to suppress the militant wage-slaves.

On the other hand, the militant wageslaves are justified in doing all in their power, using every weapon possible that will benefit their class to wrest) from the employers of the world that product

of labor which belongs only to labor. Until that great object is accomplished, we will suffer and read of more industrial atrocities such as have taken place in Waihi. These fights arc under tlie present system of spoils for the robbers, inevitable, and can only be abolished by labor uniting and fighting the one universal enemy, the masters of our lives, the employing-class.

Waihi, December 11