TWELVE POUNDS A WEEK.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume XII, Issue 3659, 22 December 1920, Page 4

TWELVE POUNDS A WEEK.

Cable messages from Australia indicate that unrest of a serious character continues to (prevail in all States of the Commonwealth. Also that it is becoming more threatening as the holiday season approaches, the. most alarming feature being theshipping cooks and stewards strike being further accentuated and made much more complicated by wharf labourers hajving elatims ! for a wage of five shillings and three ( pence per hour. To every intelligent person it will be apparent (hat no '' sane worker with honest purpose could ask for such a wage, siinply because it is utterly impossble to produce it. Food and other supplies imported by labour at that price would be beyond the powe ( r of even the five shilling and threepence per hour men to purchase, and certainly the masses of the people would have to live and clothe themselves with what they could obtain in the country. It is now disclosed beyond all doubt that whatever the great controlling, dominating force behind the bold, openly admitted determination to push industrial, commercial and financial unrest to a chaotic extreme is, it is being done with the one purpose, to cause civil strife, national feebleness, financial debility ' knd social breakdown. For it cannot be claimed under any apology, or that any body of workers, such as the unskilled wharf labourers, are making a claim .for five shillings and threepence per hour thinking they can earn it, and j knowing that the community can pay it." Then who are they that are encouraging men into such folly? Who are they that are using the workers as mere pawns in a game of life and death for some chimerical ulterior purpose in which the workers can only lose their souls 'to i the devils actuating and prompting them? The masses of the (people, i who are going to furnish an ovqrwhelmfing proportion of the victims in whatever nature the upheaval a crisis may result in, are entitled to j know just what is at the bottom of j the insane, stupid, barbarous programme that is being persisted with. The intelligence came from Australia & day or two ago that some labour leaders proposed wages amounting to twelve pounds a week f and now we have the fact cabled that wharf-labourers have submitted a demand for'wages on that basis. It is unthinkable that those wharf/abourers are such fools that they do not know they are demanding the impossible. Of course they know, but do they know themselves what the general masses of the people do not know, that is, why aire they persisting in trying to attain, the impossble? .Do they realise the incongruity of the actions their prompters and controllers are urging

and pushing them into? It is an in-

comprehensible impasse industry has arrived at, will not governments or somebody that is in the secret of ! the diabolical camouflage lilt the ! screen and Illumine the scatcning i swirl of strife sufficiently for ordinI airy people to learn its real ipurpose, 1 and to see exactly from, whence the satanic force comes that can so successfully pull the strings of strife in British Dominions? A fine specimen of a young Brtish Union Steamship Company officer stood on the deck of his ship at the Wellington wharf a few days ago, directing cargo operations. Turning to a land companion he said in response to enquiry about his welfare, "I am going to quit this uniform and the service. You see that man at the donkey" he said, "well, he gets pounds more a month than I do, and bis mind is rlree when 'he leaves work, gets double pay for overtime in addition; I get no overtime pay and when I leave duty I have to put in hours of study to equip myself for a higher position, I am going to pull off this uniform and push a barrow down the/re for that is the class of work that is receiving the highest pay in these times.'' That splendid specimen of the British merchant service' is now actually (pushing a barrow on the Wellington wharf. This is probably one instance of the many, not only in shipping, but in all other industries. Country newspaper production is rendered positively ridiculous by wages awards of various kinds and characters. In small offices a man who operates a printing machine fcxr half an hour in printing two or three hundred papers cannot be put to help in any other work unless paid the wage for the highest class of work he is asked to assist in, regardless of what he can do or earn. If he has passed the sixth standard, and is likely to be able to bring in a few notes about a football match or a tea meeting, he has to be promoted for the" time being into being a journalist, and, according to the law as interpreted by the Labour Inspector, he has to be paid according to the journalist's award. These arc merely quoted instances of the stupid harassing extreme to which awards are being pushed. The labour extremist to-day is the "beggar on horseback .riding to the devil." It is the public" s right to know Who put him on the horse i and who is keeping him on the road to the devil roughshod over the whole community? Let the source of all this lunacy about twelve / pounds a week to wharf labourers be disclosed, so that the community as a whole may realise just where it stands. The Commonwealth Premier has his hands' well-filled with whipping trouble, and it is not unlikely that Mr Massey longs for less strenuous times and conditions, All New Zealand as well as all Australia is in a state of ferment and unccrtafnty, for it seems,, that the same people and powers who encouraged frantic efforts to prevent men leaving the 'land to go to the war are just as desperately at work in ■ impeding soldiers firom being got back on to the land The whole community is justified in its anxiety to know why industrial rupture is being invited by such impossible demands as those of the wharf labourers and they are equally entitled to more intelligent definition of the power that can, by lying scheming, cajolery and fooling generally, work labourers up to such' a mad frenzy as tc believe that they can be paid twelve pounds a week; to launch upon industrial battle in which they would lose vetry much if not all, of what they - have "already acquired.