CURRENT TOPICS

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 90, 25 July 1910, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS

"EXPLOITING THE MASSES." One of the most amusing remarks .labor idealists every make is that the peup.e are "being exploited." Of course they are. Life, both civilised and savage, is a series of exploitations, and never lias been anything else, and never will be. The Labor Party, which is at present conferring with great vigour, appears to believe that all the hideous wrongs that have been specially prepared for ihe worker can be set right by the entry of the Government into trade, in order to hit the hated capitalist "where he lives," so to speak. But if one may be permitted to make so great an accusation, it is here stated that labor exploits the capitalist with the same vigor and enterprise that the capitalist exploits labor. The big-souled men, the brainy men, the independent men, and the men who count either on the side of capital or of labor, welcome fight and exploitation, and give blow for blow. For their size, New Zealand sectional parties have the loudest whines in the universe. No party ever considers what it can do for itself by getting its shoulder into the collar. It always wmnes that "it isn't fair," and wonders when it can get the Government to erect a fence for it to lean up against. It doesn't propose to erect its own fence, or to provide cash for the fence, or to keep it in repair when it is erected. It says it is being exploited, and it isn't fair, and that the only reasonable thing is for it to be allowed to exploit everything and everybody else. We have said, and know it to be true, that the worker can control the State absolutely, but he can only control it by working and not I whining. There is not a worker in New Zealand to-day who is not an exploiter, if he has any pride in himself, and the capitalist .who is not an exploiter might as well throw up the sponge. The general ideas set forth at the Labor Conference in Auckland are by way of promising a spineless dependent, leaning generation, of enormously increasing the number of State s4rvant«, ana of absolutely killing commercial or produc-, I five ambition. Out of the ruck of j these poor "exploited" workers in New i Zealand, come the men who exploit their fellows. Labor will not, for instance, be able to name a dozen sawmillers in New Zealand who are iiot! from the ranks of labor, so that labor itself has put up the price of timber! 100 per cent. The poor suffering perI son who this year is being "exploited," next year or the year after is doing his level best to knock 100 per cent, out of his former mates. The labor idealists give knocks, but hate to take them. They want to be independent of the 1 hated capitalist, but dependent on the Government. They hate the way commerce and trade is run, but cannot run it themselves. Capital is a curse, because the other fellow controls it. If the brains of the labor idealists are go-l ing to run the country, it necessarily: means that the idealists must find the cash. What extra work do the idealists propose, to do in order to find the money 1 necessary for the State to undertake' works intended to wipe out commercial ambition and to make the people of the Dominion a nation of leaners? i "MORE WORK FOR THE PEOPLE." I This motion was carried at the Labor Conference :-r- ---} "That the Government be asked to establish genuine reproductive model farms, also, an up-to-date co-operative factory or works in each important industry, such as mav be required for the purpose of checking excessive importations, increasing employment. and| the absorption of surplus labor: the| industries that have become monopolies and those that are being lost to thej State through excessive importations! to receive first attention." Mr. E. Tregear, Secretary to the Labor] ] Department, quotes the following facts .1 in tile New Zealand Times:—■ j The birth-rate fell from 41 per thousand in 187(5 to 27 per thousand in! 1(100. The average daily attendance at Dunedin schools fell from 414S pupils in 18S7 to 2882 in IDo7.—Labor Report,] 1908. j j There are few children between five, and fifteen years of age to take the' I places of their elders as vacancies oei cur.—Labor Report, 1909. I In spite of wide demand and of con-1 ! siderahle immigration there are this' ! year twelve hundred and fifty-?ight I fewer young people (under 21 years of ' age) engaged in New Zealand industries than were so occupied the preceding year.—Labor Report, 1910.

In a poem that is stirring in its truth, [ Mr. Tregear emphasises his conclusions t •egarding the facts. We have taken the 1 .iberty of quoting two powerful verses:— l 'l ■'Menace of Asia? Nay. Over the Orient Sea ', Rank upon rank of pitiless eyes ivaicn, ' us unceasingly; | . Patient, stolid, immutable; quiet as ; passionless Fate, Why should they leap at our rides'| mouths who have only to crouch and j i wait? "Peril is here! is here! Here in the Childless Land Life sits high in the Chair of Fools, twisting her ropes of sand; Here the lisping of babies and cooing] of mothers cease; Here the Man and the Woman fail, and only the flocks increase." The Labor Party ceaselessly hammer on the subject "more work for the people," but the nation cries out for; more people for the work. It has been shown everywhere and in all times that the spoon-fed few become apathetic and discontented. The spoon-fed many become decadent, useless, and cease to be 1 at all. The nation that either will not or cannot produce its kind will in a short time produce nothing. The section of people who are antagonistic to increase | within and physical help from outside invite aggression. A politician in Parliament the other day said that he was not one who believed in the increase oi the birth-rate. It is the sort of heresy attacked so powerfully by the poet whom we quote. The only satisfaction that can be gleaned from the fact that there is a serious diminution of natural increase in all Anglo-Saxon communities is that it may not be the fault of the people, and that the mysterious workings of Providence are not to be understood. But when the folk who wish to dominate New Zealand suggest that New Zealand will get along nicely without any more people, they are hardly to be trusted with the administration of affairs.