The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 29, 1919. THE LABOUR PROBLEM.

Taihape Daily Times, 29 January 1919, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 29, 1919. THE LABOUR PROBLEM.

(With which is incorporated The fai* hapo Pout, £.fld WalmaU-jo Newst

■ Peace Conference .discussions ire moving rapidly; the principle of a League of Nations has been accepted and a commission is at work evolving details. Next to establishing a basis of friendship between governments it was nothing but natural the Conference should turn its attention to the evolution of industrial and social peace. The League of Nations is to promote international co-operation; to provide a safeguard against war, apd every nation which can be relied on to promote these objects is eligible for membership. A second commission was set up by the Conference to inquire into the international labour question, to secure common action regarding employment, and recommend a permanent agency to continue enquiry under the League of Nations. The labour question is without doubt at the very base of modern society; it is seen thatthose who do least labour are at the extreme ends of the social fabric, the millionaire and the submerged tenth both live upon the industry of others I who work, and it is this hideous ini' dustrial deformity that is the source of national industrial strife and social disruption. But the international aspect of the labour question is vastly more important, and to secure abstention from industrial war it must bo | settled. The merest tyro in the study of labour must realise that no cure for labour affection can result from whatever effqrts are possible in individual states or nations. We have realised that payment of high wages in the manufacture of an exportable article may, and does, result in the loss of that particular industry, because other nations in which wages have not been 1 increased can continue to sell at a ! much lower price.. Labour leaders are I fully alive to the fact that there must I be a uniformity of wages in the varii ous industries throughout the world, 1 and thus arose the ill-thought-out pro- ! posal to establish a world-wide union < to be known as the “Independent I Workers of the World.” Chagrined at I finding the laws of nations were so diversified that the linking up of in- ( ternational labour was impracticable, i a large section of labour in most emmj tries became, • in their disappointment I and desperation, so near to criminal j lawlessness as to keep the whole State I in which they lived in a condition of industrial upheaval. They groped blindly for a way to their object without meeting with the slightest encouragement, and it has remained e or the greatest oppressor of labour among ( kings, the Kaiser of Germany, to pre- | cipitate a world war, the aftermath of ! which is fraught with all the possibiii- I i ties of providing them with the opporj tunity to set up that elysium of labour, ' to discover that industrial “holy grail'' | which they have so long been in quest j | of. So that nothing in food production ! is wasted, and so that high wages in j a country may not deter the people | from producing, it is essential that all . disparity in cost of production should be removed. So long as- wheat can bo ! grown in Southern Russia and in the Trans-Caspian States at half the price it can be grown for in Nicw Zealand, wo cannot expect our wheat industry to flourish; other peoples do not want it at our price. The root of the trouble is cost of production, in other words, the remuneration of labour The Peace Conference knows that nothing but world-wide common action can cope | with industrial strife arising from the wages question; it is aware of the utterly absurd and impossible situation the world has drifted into, and next in importance to eliminating the curse of war is the necessity to institute a scheme for w T orld-wide industrial peace. Unfortunately, nations left to self-de-velopment have progressed on lines widely divergent. Germany kept its 1 working population under much : stricter control than Britain and ’Am- ] erica did, and hence by establishing a 1 much lower uniform rate of wages Ger- i

! man merchants wore able to undersell |in foreign markets and thereby get possession of the greatest volume of trade. Although not realised at the time, owing to the higher wages Britain was paying, or the much lower wages Germany was paying, Britain was on the rim of becoming an industrial vassal to Germany. A stable society can only result from the complete weeding out of every vestige of feudalism in those countries that will, and must, enter into competition with what the British Empire has to place on the world’s markets. Wheat, meat, butter, and cheese has its value fixed at the hub of interchange, to whence the world’s production chiefly finds its ■way, and if only the competitors of the past were to be those of the future, the marketing difficulty would not loom up so perplexingly ponderous. We have to realise that China is already a competitor in meat production, and that thousands of miles of the finest meat country in the world is being rescued from lordly sport and put to', the production of meat. The action tho Peace Conference is taking in connection, with the international labour question must centre around producers and workers. v Higher costs in a country must result in destruction of that country’s industry; therefore tho haphazard growth of the old worn out wages scheme must >go, and there must be equal pay for precisely similar work established throughout the whole world. In the past, aberrations of labour order and custom have resulted in the enactment of laws and regulations to control them. The world has exhausted its means of temporising with such vital questions, and now the Peace Conference is going to the root source of the trouble and it is hoped that no self-interest will bo allowed to prevent the successful evolution of levelling up the workers of the world, which the I.W.W. so miserably and disastrously failed in. There are tangible indications that even the redhanded Bolsheviks of Russia now realise that the Peace Conference can peacefully achieve all which they have failed in by their methods of destruction and devastation. The emancipation of the spirit of democracy is’ at hand, but even that' can scarcely be regarded as the' ultimate boon if it does not inculcate and impel an international faith hitherto, unknown aniogst nations. Humanity lives and ‘moves upon what it produces, and to secure immunity from national and international strife it is essential that the labour question as we understand it to-day should be wiped right out, and bo replaced by a scheme that puts the world’s labour and production on a parity as regards wages and costs. Any disparity must over be the cause j of discontent. Meat ' produced by Chinese insigificantly paid labour on j j insignificantly priced land must have j but one effect on New Zealand meat. This equally applies to everything produced in this Dominion for export. If j there- are tc he uniform market prices for the world’s produce, there must, as a natural sequence, bo uniform prices ( of land and labour used in its produc- j tion. i ■