Te Aroha AND Ohinemuri News SATURDAY, JANUARY 15, 1898. THE ENGLISH INDUSTRIAL CRISIS.

Te Aroha News, Volume XIV, Issue 2068, 15 January 1898, Page 2

Te Aroha AND Ohinemuri News

SATURDAY, JANUARY 15, 1898. THE ENGLISH INDUSTRIAL CRISIS.

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Obdees for a large Dumber of locomotives and carriages for tbe TransSiberian railway have just been placed in America, which, in the usual course, would have gone to British workshops, and We learn, from, the cables this week, that an English firm has bought 16,000 toDB of steel ingots in the United States, at a saving of LBOOO. Facts like . these together with the knowledge that the volume of English trade it steadily diminishingin the face | of German and Belgian subsidised competition are calculated to make oven the most thorough-going supporter of the workmen ini the present industrial crisis. at Home, inclined to re consider his position. We ap proved only the other clay the firmness of the stand the men we/e taking; for, we are ever inclined to regard with sympathy a constitutional agitation for shorter hours, for better pay, for an all-round improvement in the conditions of the wage-earner’s life : but ' when the contention begins to assume the phase of a fight for a sentiment, such as the maintenance of a tyrannical Union, run apparently more in the interests of clever professional agitators than the genuine workers, than whom no class of men are more easily duped by catchwords and empty sounding phrases, we are strongly inclined to pull up with a round turn and take stock of .the situation. But the cables are so contradictory we confess we are unable to arrive at' any satisfactory conclusion. In some other matters we have abetter chance of forming an opinion, however. The struggle going on in England to-day began in an attempt on the - part of the men, by .constitutional means, we again lay stress on that fact, to establish a fair division of the enormous profits in the engineering trade. Now, t the'German working man is.aqcusedy-itwsome. quarters, of . subscribing-towards--the strike-fund of his* English brethren jjfco serve a sinister purpose, ; to divert s tradeto his own country. In our opinion this is nothing less than slander. Tho German working man' is an out and out' Socialist; but that ho is so in theory only, we deny. ;A contemporary, with:; a sneer, describes him as sagely discussing, at His" beer-garden on a Sunday night,, a . theoretical socialism he would be the 1 very last man in the; world ,io ( put into practice. In Eoussean ? s i time the French nation ripe for revolution, neither.is tfie German to-day. In the same journal not so very long ago we were presented with a picture of the young Emperor haunted day and night by that which he most dreads in the world; that spectre which makes him the morose and moody monarch that he is—the spectre of socialism whose gaunt clufcon is already tugging at the Imperial robes. As he rides through the streets of Berlin no deepthroated murmur of loyalty greets his appearance, and as his eye flashes along the rows of stolid faces and detects the averted looks of his subjects surely the iron must eutor the haughty soul of him who lately proclaimed himself, in a moment of overweening vanity, God’s anointed. We hear of his furious tirades against the sullen-browed representatives of Socialism iu the German Houses of Parliament—a party that every election sees increasing in strength, and whose stubborn demeanour troubled even the indomitable spirit of the Iron Chancellor—Bismarck himself. In the face of such a deeprrooted personal enmity as we know the Emperor cherishes, a perfect police system, and a military organisation officered by a nobility which hqs ever shown itself only too ready to flesh its sword in the carcases of the commonlty at the first glimmer of the smouldering fires of discontent. How in the name of common sense, can the German working-man do more than theorise on Socialism over his liquor and tobacco in the seclusion of a middle-class beer-garden ? In free England the working man has the right of free speech, andoonstitutional action; in Germany he is muzzled, and if - he only takes his muzzle off to breathe more freely he is liable to be bayonetted without benefit of clergy. The American people boast that they have no , standing army ; but the millionaires and monopolists in the land of the stars and stripes are ; wiser than the masses. There is a perfectly organised force in America known as Pinkerton‘s Detective agenoy. ■Composed of picked men, resolute disciplined men, marvellously proficient in the Use; of the revolver. A strike occurs in a Pullman or a CarYards and what do these millionaire monopolists do 2 One act of mob violenoe instigated, probably by their emissaries and a hundred or a thousand of Pinkerton’s men, as the case requires, are mobilised by telephone and sent down to tho- scene of dispute within twenty-four hours, by special trainv In Illinois and PensyLvania, they vary the routine occasionally by calling out the county militia Who blaze away at recalcitrant Italian workiaea-with tfie of a recruit.

on the winning side. The slavery of the working man in United States is worse, far worse, than ever the negro was , subjected to. To say that the workers in Germany and America who, in their unpretentious way are Contributing, towards the maintonace of the families of the English strikers are influenced by ulterior inotives : a desire to ruin them in the long run-—is to take a view of their motives to which we for on© would think shame to subscribe. T ■ -• ■/;. . i