The Daily News WEDNESDAY, MAY 2, 1906. LABOR'S UTOPIA.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVII, Issue 8099, 2 May 1906, Page 2

The Daily News WEDNESDAY, MAY 2, 1906. LABOR'S UTOPIA.

A Southern paper lias taken the i trouble to very carefully compile a : list of the wants of organised labor in New Zealand. The said wants are scheduled under sixty-live sections, and if all, or even a few, of 1 the wants were attended to, soon the present state of society would give | place to either perfect peace or anarchy—but most probably the latter. The wants of labor have in the past ! been many, and some of them are extremely reasonable. The Government has attended to many of them, and if they have resulted in the better condition of the worker and a higher standard of living for the " horny-handed," feiv will complain, So long as the working man—by which we mean the man engaged in physical labor, as apart from the lesser paid person engaged in the lower walks of commerce—was able to see his position becoming easier by reason of the constant passing of " alleviating " methods, so long was he fairly content. * * * * Not long ago a judge had occasion to give an award in an arbitration case against the union bringing it, and the union thereupon arose and smote the Court, accused the judge of bias, and altogether acted as if the Conciliation and Arbitration Act had been forced on the poor, long-suffer-ing " grafter." The fact is, of course, that the said long-sufl'erer wanted that Act; and got it. One judges from the recent anger displayed that an Arbitration Act should not arbitrate at all, but merely decide, and always for the same party, Perhaps : this is Socialism. * * # * Among the sixty-live revolutionary wants of organised labor one is land nationalisation. Perhaps it would be a very good thing if we could . make a fresh start. There is no getL ting away from the fact that the Creator gave the earth to people and not to persons. But organised labor also wants the unimproved value rating -an excellent thing in many ways and in some circumstances. Labor, apparently, does not see that i there is no necessity for the unimproved value rating if no one except the State has any land, but only owns E the improvements on it. Labor is r illogical. Another want is an increase in the land tax. Excellent; but if the State nationalises the land, ( why the increase? You've simply got to collar a man's land, pay him ' the worth of it, and close land taxal tion accounts with him forever. Another want is unconditional preference to unionists. In other words, the coercion of the independent man who does not join a union, or the 1 starving of himself and family by making it impossible to get a job. * * * * . Seeing that many prominent tnen in Labor circles said that the Concilia ' tion and Arbitration Act should bu repealed, it is curious to find, thrtt firiotlier of the " wants " is that Government employees should be brought . under the provisions of the Act. If o there isn't going to be any Act, it is . difficult to see how Civil servants can be governed by it. However, we hold that while such an Act exists, if it is good for the private worker it is also good for the Government servant. It is curious that any Government should " ameliorate " everybody's employees except its own. Nationalisation of the mineral wealth is rather a large order. The finding of cash to purchase the Waihi mine would be interesting for a little start. Also it would be necessary to purify humanity from the boots up and put hobbles on prospectors. Nationalisation of the kauri gum industry was , suggested by the fact that the only > people who dig gum with any energy, who make it pay and who go about it in a business-like way, are the Austrians. Labor is nothing if not selfish, There is a fable aboul a dog and a manger which applies, * * * * Then there is another want that might touch the foreign person who had the effrontery to want to make a living at a job which our own people don't tackle to any extent. Organisation wants the importation of both male and female labor to be restrict ed. In fact, New Zealand appeal's to be just about the correct size for half a million people, for, of course, there will be no capitalists in the coming Utopia. Organised labor, if its schedule is to be believed," desires to kill all the qualities that have made the Empire. It does not believo in ambition. It would reduce all to one level, and make it impossible for anyone to rise above it, It would regard as an enemy a strange man, though of the same blood, who by superior skill was enabled to get a billet in the colony. It would like to have a listless, apathetic population, which would entirely lose all its individuality, its skill and self-respect, seeing that everyone would depend on the State, and everyone be entitled to work—provided everyone was a unionist - at a set wage at a set job, for a set number of years, and for no one but oneself and the nation, so that one's stomach should be always full, but nothing else. * * * * In time, supposing the workers' Utopia comes to Nev Zealand to stay, there will be a set expression on the faces of the people. There won't be any need to learn anything except , how to eat one's share of the State , loaf, and there won't be any need for i the nationalisation of the mineral i wealth, because cash currency will be I useless. In fact, organised labor has been reading Bellamy and other people. Organised labor keeps on think- : ing and saying thess things while it 1 is working at the minimum wage and i sees no chance of becoming a capitalist. Hut when organised labor begins to score a bargain or two in land, | or becomes an employer of labor, it s is simply marvellous how few of the sixty-five articles of its faith it has any time for. !