The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE SATURDAY, JANUARY 5, 1918. EVOLUTION AND REVOLUTION.

Taihape Daily Times, 5 January 1918, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

SATURDAY, JANUARY 5, 1918. EVOLUTION AND REVOLUTION.

/With which is incorporated The Taihapo Post and Waiciarino News).

Reports from socialist labour sources arising out of the great convention recently held, are beginning to be published in British newspapers. That of the Labour Reconstruction Committee seems to have been a misnomer unless labour and extreme socialism are synonymous terms. Bitter extremes of capitalism and socialism are on a level in so far as the mischief or the good that is likely to follow in their train, and we have ample experience that revolution springs from the practice of either or both, the reason of this is that both or either are so opposed to the general good and welfai’e of the people that they become matters of life and death importance, and life and death struggles will, as we know from experience, sooner or later result from persistent though lawful practice. The Labour Reconstruction Report, just issued, favours a minimum wage of thirty shillings per week for fortyeight hours work. This, of course, applies to Britain only, and seems to be rather a reasonable demand. The second item is obscurely worded (due probably to the execrable, stupid, illiterate, incompetent, untruthful telegraph service the Telegraph Department considers good enough for Taihape) but it most likely means that a levy is to be made upon capital to pay the charges, interest and otherwise, in connection with the National debt, an outlay amounting to three hundred millions. This must appeal to every fair-minded person as involving legislation of the bitterest class character. The new labour-cum-So-cialist thought is diametrically opposed to yiat which labour has hitherto given voice to. The sane labour cry has ever hitherto been for legislation that affects rich and poor alike, and an administration that cannot twist such legislation so as to favour one more than the other. The ethical basis of such a demand is unshakably just; it tends to eliminate class bitterness by placing all on an equal footing before and under the huV; that while avaricious and warped minds and kinked intellects would seek to avoid its fairness, administration would rigidly hold them to a right course in the observance of such a law. So much lies in the administration of laws that it has been said that administration is greater than the law, and realising this, what a hell would the passing of a law to levy from capital a sum of three hundred millions annually establish in our midst. The very proposal is self-con-demnatory; it is a clear admission of the Labour Reconstruction Committee that whatever they may, or can, do there is going to exist the great class chasm between labour and capital, and that whatever they may, or. can, do there is always going to be the disgustingly rich and the irretrievable poor. . Class legislation is unsound, unjust, dishonest, and therefofcT cannot be productive 0 f social and economic pcace > We unhesitatingly affirm that the road to the proper elevation of labour and the stoppage of com-

mercial robbery lies rather through the old labour equality for all, rather than through legislating levies on one class for the betterment of others. It iS utter fallaciousness to say that is already beiong done through present rating provisions, which are merely a common-sense utilisation of wellapproved taxing systems towards securing an equality of sacrifice. The Labour Reconstruction Committee goes farther, even, and, in that discloses that it is in seme way related to the Bolsheviks of Russia. It asks for elimination of private wealth; that the State stall own all money, and as a corollary that the individual shall have nothing but what Bolshevik administrators like to dole out. Is it thinkable that in the present state of social and economic evolution any State on earth will make such a revolutionary change? What w r ould be its relationships commercially with all other countries? When one tries to think out an excuse for such postulates he becomes submerged in chaotic muddle, in a turmoil of confusion from which there is no escape, A protective tariff is asked for, but why a protective tariff if manufacturer and producer are eliminated by not being allowed to have the necessary capital to produce cr manufacture? The admirers and the would-be apers of the Russian B'olshevik amongst us would as rapidly run the British Empire to destruction as their confreres in Russia are most assuredly doing wdth the Russian Empire. Old leaders of laour in Britain, in Australia and in New Zealand are now unheeded and the Red Fed Socialist, who openly preaches the seizing of money from one class to give it to another, involving all the horrors which we sec by the Russian example attends such inhumanly barbaric and insane processes, are installed at the head of the labour movement. It never has been understandable to us why labour is so prone to bo led through a course like that followed in Russia, in which the spilling of blood cannot be avoided. If there are any so foolish in this country, or in any other who think social elysium is to be reached through levies and confiscations, let them try to think what relationship their country would be in to the rest of the world. It is quite correct to say that such a country would scon have no capital worth mentioning to do anything with. The real road and the quickest, surest road to labour’s rightful position of equality lies through the teachings of the leaders of the old legitimate labour, and if the same energy, money and intelligence were employed in political and social education of the people as is spent in advocating revolutionary doctrines, labour would rightfully, honestly soon come into its own Evolution is safe, is just, is certain, while revolution has never shotvn to be either. Mr Henderson, in a message to British labour, discovers how stupidly previous the demands above discussed are; he says labour must, as the first step, demand a League of Nations as a preliminary to a League of Peoples, and then he views this glorious phantasy, and says it would be a dramatic declaration that the nations of the earch form one family. Let us not ape children in building such impossible air castles; would it not be more practical to commit wholesale hari-kari and go into paradise without waiting and spilling each other’s blood in reaching a condition which has no existence only in impracticable minds of the genus Botshevika Hendcrsonii. Common-sense leads us to the conviction that improvement of the individual does not lie through the hangman, neither does social, political, and economic progress necessarily follow beheading the men we have allowed by the laws we have been a party to enacting, to accumulate huge wealth so that it may be given to others. If labour, led by Mr Henderson, is going to make sure of the necessary League of Nations and League of Peoples’ first step, before the Labour Reconstruction revolutionary demands are to bo put into practice' then none need trouble further, as such Utopias will never be established that will permit of the rest of the Bolshevik Labour Reconstruction programme _