LABOR AND CAPITAL.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 57, 9 March 1907, Page 4

LABOR AND CAPITAL.

To the Editor. Sir,—Your remarks in the "Sews" of February 19. oil tho .Slaughtermen's strike ami Arbitration just about express my own feelings ill the matter. Alv sympathies also are with the men but iu this -only that Uiey, like the average of 11s producer.-., receive but a small share of tin* products of our labour. ]i cannot be otherwise while we remain content, that the few. who are producers of little or nothing, shall Lemain consumers or wasters of much. 1 agree with you that the men have their obligations as well as their employers. Breaking the law may be justifiable to the Russian workman., svlio had no voice in the making of it. but we here have the power to abolish unjust laws by our votes. Our ignorance is our enemy. You say that there are not wanting s:giis that "if the men's demands are unsatisfied the law will not be respected." More's the pity, but J. would that yon hud added, "the employers' demands also," because as far as i recollect the Auckland master cabinetmakers were the tirst to really break the law, by an evasion of the. arbitration award. Iho Court had, raised the minimum wage of competent men from 1/1 to 1/3. The employer's then picked out just a very few of 'the men, and dee'ded that the rest, of tiicm had suddenly become incompetent. That was just us much a lock-out by the employers us this is a strike by the men. Roth are dishonest, anarchistic evasions of the law which we all have a voice in the making of. After all, such experiences are of value to us. John l-V----tc* Frazcr tells us in "America at Work" that the wage of the Chicago worker in ten years had gone up JO per cent, and that the cost of living bad gone up 40 per cent, and the workers everywhere are beginning to understand the very siinpic little substruction sum being learned by the (.'lreago worker, that is, ten from forty leaves 30 per cent more to the employing class and the same per cenlage of an Irishman's rise to himself. W'e are beginning to learn that by a section of us raising our wages (whether by arbitration or the more brutal strike) we have also succeeded m raising tne cost of living to our move '.ip.foitv.nate helpless comrades as well as to ourselveslj We hare,, according (to Mr, Fra/.er, been so busy in putting 2'/ a d into our pocket that we did not notice the slim lingers of the capitalist abstracting the lfld we already hail from our other pocket. The day of the strike is past. We may by catching 'the employers unprepared win a very temporary concession from tlicni, but in the long run the game is theirs As. savs the American Socialist paper, the "Appeal to lleason," which, bv the way, bas 300.000 subscribers mid lias an occasional special edilion of ,'i.000,000. "When will Labour learn the futility of the strike, and that the only place where it is feare.t, and is likely to be effective is at the ballot box';'' In conclusion, Kir, the remedy for the workers, as it appears to me, is to work for the establishment in New Kealand of a Co operative Coinmonivealth founded on the collective ownership of the land and all the means of production and exchange. Knowing that "come-lot Us- reason-together" is the object of your correspondence columns ! hope some other reader will in a reasoning spirit point out my mistakes.—l nm, etc., C. rARTCF.It.