THE NEED FOR UNITY

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVII, Issue 8355, 15 February 1913, Page 11

THE NEED FOR UNITY

A LETTER TO WORKERS. (By Edward Tregear.) There are three questions all workers should ask themselves concerning unity. These are; (1) Have we needed it? (2) Do we need it? (3) Shall we need it? (1) Have we needed it? The whole course of industrial history is one flaming discouragement of disunion: one flaming incentive to collective action on the part of the workers. You must be reminded of the pastit is no good forgetting or trying to ignore it, for out, of its darkness you have emerged and into its darkness you will sink again if you will not learn tho wisdom it preaches at you, screams at you. Slavery, serfdom, cruelty, ignorance, injustice lay like a horrible black web across the faces of the workers centuries ago. Here two or three, there two or three, met together, coalesced, held meetings in which they recounted their wrongs, took counsel for redress, subscribed their pitiful little funds, and became the nucleus of a star of Hope in our social system. In a phrase, they had learnt what industrial union meant. , , , , , , They had an awful task before them, a task’to chill the bravest heart. Read what a calm, thoughtful man of weight in tho world of letters says—don’t confuse him with revolutionary agitators—his name is Thorold Rogers, author of “Six Centuries of Work and Wages.” This is his verdict; “I contend that from 1563 to 1824, a conspiracy, concocted by the law and carried out .by parties interested in its success, was entered into, to cheat the English workman of his wages, to tie him to the soil, to deprive him of hope, and to degrade him into irremediable poverty. . . . For more than two centuries and a half the English law and those who administered the law were engaged in grinding the English workman down to the lowest pittance, in stamping out every expression or act which indicated any organised discontent. and in multiplying penalties upon him when he- thought of his natural rights.” In this quotation you catch some faint reflection of what the founders of unionism had to endure. Against them were kings, nobles, lawyers, employers, masters; against them wore wealth, education, privilege, old customs, monopolies, all (when arrayed thuswise) potent forces of tho Rowers of Darkness. Shall we give away what those gallant, undaunted hearts of the older timo won for us? Unionism, and unionism alone, has prevented the workers from being broken one by one under the wages system and under “freedom of contract.” The unorganised employments have been ground and sweated till they have produced the swarm of degenerates which now disgrace every “civilised” country, and only the force of unionism has delivered a portion of the working-class from weltering in the industrial hells which many manufacturing towns have become. In truth, the history of the past answers our first question plainly and vividly enough. Unity among workers has been sadly needed. (2) Do wo need it? Now, perhaps, more than ever. Not because our sufferings are worth mention beside those of our forefathers; not that we deserve more than they aid; but because our very privileges demand it and because a sense of true manhood and womanhood burns in us which was almost trampled out of existence in tho hard llives of our predecessors. The education that they did not have but that Ve have received insists that we, being able to recognise our right to live, and to live hopeful and worthy lives, subject to the caprices of no other human being, should bo determined that neither ourselves nor our children should be used as mere fuel for the industrial fires or as the providers of luxuries for 'those who do nothing to earn them. •If here, in New Zealand, we have not yet reached that degradation which our present economic system produces elsewhere; if we have food and clothes and .a sheltering roof in most cases, still 'we look to industrial unity to provide something more; something more than enough food and clothing to enable us to go on from day to day working for the profits and massed fortunes of more jastute and crafty men than ourselves. We want to receive the value of that which our labour gives to the world, neither more nor less. Only by united -action can we hope to get it. There are wise lessons to be learnt from the old Greek myths. Here is one: Jason, in search of tho Golden Fleece, had, before he could gain that desired object, to perform some heroic tasks. One of these was “sowing the dragon’s teeth.” When he had sowed these teeth in a field there immediately sprang up a host of armed men, who barred his path and were about to take his life, but Jason’s sweetheart, who was a witch as well as a princess, advised him to throw a stone among them. He did so, and the armed men turned their swords upon one another, slaying till all were consumed. Now for the application. Wo of tho workers’ party in New Zealand are the band of armed men and the stone of Discord thrown among us has turned the sword of each against the other to our social and political destruction, while the princes and witches have looked on with laughter and scorn, crying: “Why should we fight them? Let them slay themselves!” The United Labour Party, the Federation of Labour, the Socialist Party, the isolated and unaffiliated unions, tho non-unionist workers—all these have for years been warring, abusing, vilifying one another, while the Squatters’ Ring, the Employers’ Federation, the banks, the mining speculators, the capitalistic newspapers, the commercial trusts have only stopped looting now and then—to laugh. It is time that it ended. It is time that we understood our position, and that we make them understand theirs. I seem to hear the glorious command of General Grant in the American Civil War: “The whole line will advance!” In six months’ time you will have a chance to show if you really want unity in Labour or not. At the July Congress there will be an opportunity to every member- of a trade, every advanced thinker, every variety of progressive economist to bring service and consolidation to the counsels of his fellows. Tho Labour laws you voted for, worked for, fought for, are being insidiously destroyed, and legislation that will purloin your heritage, cripple your activities, lessen your earnings, and bleed you white will be introduced and made permanent unless you wake up and join hands with your brothers in tho light of the new day and the new hope. Yes, we need unity—NOW. (3) Shall we need unity in the future? Ay, and w© shall not only need it, but we shall get it. We shall not always remain the fools of Time

and tho jests of cunning knaves. II you need unity for yourselves, ten times more you need it for your children. You have toiled and denied yourselves to bring up families for our admirable industrial and commercial system to assimilate and consume. Deny yourselves a little while longer, and let your unity give those children a freer, cleaner, better life than you have ever had, or ever possibly could have so long as you waste your strength in fighting your comrades, waste your votes in electing your enemies to power, waste your sub stance in providing superfluities for the vulgar rich. Get together! Get together! “The whole line will advance!”