The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE. SATURDAY, DEC. 4, 1920. ARE WORKERS IN DANGER?

Taihape Daily Times, Volume XII, Issue 3645, 4 December 1920, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE.

SATURDAY, DEC. 4, 1920. ARE WORKERS IN DANGER?

With which is Incorporated “The Taihape Post and Waimarino Nows ”

The wages question has now reached a stage destructive to most ordin-

ary industries; we mean that some profiteers who are still netting their hundred or more per cent. could •continue the wages—cost of living competition indefinitely because they have monopolies which they have lifted beyond the control of competition. In New Zealand, as well as in Australia, Canada, South Africa and Britain, the insane scramble for higher profits and higher wages has reached the most frenzied stage that is possible, and, if reports and sworn testimony are reliable, there is an appreciable return towards a condition of commonsense business principles. Production 01 the chief exports of this Dominion probably accounts for as much labour, directly or indirectly, as all others' put together. The farming, handling, milking, shipping, freezing, making butter, cheese, and a hundred and one by products, involves the employment of quite a surprisinly large army of workers. Whatever changes the commodity undergoes after it leaves the farmer, any disturbance between a living price to the farmer and a just price to the consumer is going to press unfairly one way or the other. For sometime it was against trie wages receivers, at the present time it is distinctly and undeniably against wages payers. There are yet the dairy farmers doing better than ever they have done, but it is "questionable whether any fair-minded person will begrudge the men, who work from dark in the commencement of the day till ]ong after the sun has gone down, the brief good fortune that has come to them. For long enough dairyfarmers have had an unenviable time, and it is only in the order of changes that a little "picking" should have come their way. But, the meat and wool farming community are in a particularly bad way; the price equilibrum, for them, has broken tne wrong way, it has disastrously gone the wrong way for the whole Dominion. With a Government Tax-collector famishing for more taxation; with an empty Treasury; with the necessity for providing money for carrying on public works and soldier settlement, a rather alarimng call is> being made upon those engaged upon the land. Those men have land tax and income tax to pay, in addition to having to pay for the metalling and making of roads in the districts in which their farms are situated; the cost of farm supplies of all kinds 1 is still at a spiritdepressing level, and taken altogether the farmer has no way out of immediate difficulty hut by cutting down expenditure on labour. But, seeing that this Tfould certainly entail considerably less production, it might become the source* of disaster. With wool at sixpence a pound and meat and skins in a particularly problematical stage, both as regards price and the meat-freezing menace, the farmer's lot just now is. far frorrT being a pleasant one. Many manufacturing firms a~e at the limit of their power to earn profits; wages, costs and taxation, in ■ some cases, equal, or. overbalance the gross proceeds from manufacture, and as prices of the commodities are on the down grade the time has come for either cutting down costs or going out of business. E'/on newspaper proprietors in the large cities, where there is an alomst unlimited advertising field to work upon, have recently conferred, and they see no way out of the" difficulty at present but in raising the price of the newspaper to threepence. Advertising tariffs have been increased by one hundred per cent., but costs and taxation have easily won the race against tariff increases. It is now a fact that various industries have been forced into a seriously parlous situation by the enormous increase of costs, and a v ery considerable reduction of cost mint be made before they can again become worth while persisting in by their owneis. Unfortunately, there It-is recently come to the front, in labour matters, a party called extremists. These extremists are really communists of that character classed in Moscow as the "third international." Tlielr desire is to destroy all private enterprise; to burst up, or breakdown all present Industry, and destroy all present systems of government except that obtaining in Russia. A chief factor depended upon is to encourgae, cozen and cajole labour into striking, and still striking, for more wages, and when the time arrives that it is impossible for- industries to pay the

J wages struck for, the workers are to j precipitate a state of revolution. Workjers are told that all they have to do is to just quietly io and vi v sh 'the owners out; but they have failed jto state that there are more law- ! abiding people in the land than there iare highwaymen, and they have : omitted to picture the bloody ■scuf-fles I that take place, developing Into an | abandonee bloodthirstness that will ' leave no home in the country safe I from destruction and its occupants . safe from sheer murder. The men . who, in Parliament, blatantly proclaim that industries unable to pay the wages they claim must "burstf are a. menace to this Dominion's industries ' and to the safety and sacrednes of its j homes. Why do such men try to turn i workers from the commonsense way, | the just way, the honourable, the man!ly way? By organisation workers j can establish either monarchy or communism; they can nationalise every - I thing and everybody, or they can perj feet the means for individuals to | strive for that condition which, in the heart of every humane person is most to be desired. This Dominion's industries are at the cross roads of success and failure. Labour stands well, which road will it take? Is- it to be 'to the hell of an Utopian communism, or is the march onward and up"ward of the masses of the people to continue until the goal, now so near at hand, is reached? Could a look into the future be taken upon a, presumed communism what else could workers expect to see better than that condition which obtains in Russia to-day? It is absurd to imagine that like does not produce like; what communism has produced in Eussia it would produce in New Zealand, and knowing this Labour extremists in England have definitely and for ever turned away from communism. The strike is only used by communists. to attain their object; what do communists do with strikers in the nationalised labour of Eussia? They are in most cases shot as a warning and a Itfsson to others against striking, opposing the laws laid down by the communal dictator. Workers have liberty to strike in New Zealand if the employing class refuses to establish just conditions of work and pay, not so in Eussia; not so under communism. Then why are men who so persistently urge upon the people their communistic ideas sent to Parliament? It is chiefly owing to the scheming j of. communists to have one of their ' number first in the field, and do they not howl about a legitimate repre--1 sentative of workers coming into the contest? Like a pack o$ wpjyes^they set upon him; call him ''jj\ftpH£. fT &n<l "scab' and all the most,; .savoury names in the communal vocabulary. To-day the communist satan is virtually telling the workers that he has paid them in higher wages the price of their souls, and he insists that they follow him straightway into communism. Will workers go over the communal threshold upon which their feet have already bean led, or will they replace their confidence in those commonsense, humane men who have worked from the very initiation of Jabour movements jh% Neffr Zealand to cover the land with happy, contented homes, and -to secure the breakdown of all abuses? Communists are leading workers into an unequal fight with forces which have become militant as a resultUf the menace of com- , munism. Americans have shown con- j clusively that trusts and combines j that would oppress labour and produc- j

ers can be either manacled or killed outright by~ legislation. Workers constitute a majority in all countries, why not divert all effort from communism into organising a propaganda -with a view of putting universal suffrage to the use for which it was fought for and won? What was the use of fighting so long and so dterminedly, if workers are going to abandon it for revolution. We are confident that the majority of workers in New Zealand will, like the majority of workers in Britain, turn away form communism, l"it to continue the alliance in anyway with communism is sheer playing wis»t -ffro That is yet capable of burning.