The Daily News. FRIDAY, JANUARY 26, 1912. THE STRIKE CYCLE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 178, 26 January 1912, Page 4

The Daily News. FRIDAY, JANUARY 26, 1912. THE STRIKE CYCLE.

Throughout many countries the dominant subject, apart from armed aggression and rumors of wars, is the aggression of the worker. In many cases the aggression is just and necessary. In many other cases the most trifling excuse causes untold dislocation of trade, which rebounds not only on the woifcers but on the people. In every case where organised aggression has - been planned,, those who belong to organisations are robbed of individuality. .They are permitted to have no opinion. The heads of a great machine insist that hummer-, able workers, their wives and their families .shall go without the full of subsistence, and shall be assumed to think alike. The act of working becomes a crime against unionism, the support of a family wicked, the application of physical energy despicable. We must presume that tens of thousands of workers who are dragooned into strikes are really in hearty, antagonism to them, but dare not say so, so that if this is admitted—and it must be admitted—the system is capable of cruelly disregarding the rights of men to free action, free speech and the right to work. No'machinery ever devised can cause any small or great number of workers of any class to have the same ideals and the same means of attaining them, and it is to be

observed that in the colonies, where commercialism is in swaddling clothes, %nd in the older countries, where unthinkable interests are housed, that the greatest dangers to unity of purpose lies in the labor camps themselves. There must come a time —and it is possibly fast approaching—when huge of workers will refuse to be dragooned by the stronger willed of their own kind, when no organisation shall be able to insist that a man shall cease work, and no machine name the minimum price for his work. To insist upon the mathematical precision of all acts in life is to insist on an unattainable condition. To shovel mankind of infinitely varying capacities into heaps, insisting that each is worth each, is trifling with Nature. Already there are mutineers within the ranks, and it is the increase of these mutineers that will in time reassert the principle that the individual was made to battle his own way in the world without mollycoddling, or without being victimised by the smartest of his parasites, for parasitism is rife among organised labor, the parasites faring best and working least. Although it may seem strange in these days of workers who are dependent on their alleged friends, there are already arising bodies of independent workers. In Melbourne the Society of Free Workers —the bond workers would call them "scabs" —is gaining ground daily.

The organisation which is based upon the supposition that no one should dictate to a man what he should do for his living, for whom he should work, when he should cease to do his duty, is a preliminary attempt to obtain the, freedom that is denied by the .parasites. We have always held, and shall always hold, that the handiwork of an individual by means of which he earns his living and on which he feeds his dependents is sacred and should be his pride. In consenting that any organisation should limit his output, decrease his skill, sap his loyalty to his employers, order him to cease work, shovel him into a heap with a thousand others, he loses much of the stature of a man. Because of a nefarious system- whereby powerful organisations can rob a man of his right to work, the spirit of pride and independence has been woefully sapped. It is, however, but for ft short season. It is but a phase in the struggle. It ha« been useful as an experience, and it will lead to the time when individual worth shall be the basis of a worker's pay and not his adherence to ■ any organisatipn .which forbids him the'fextercise of his* individuality. We cordially admit that in those struggles wherein organisation has been used to fight intolerable wage-slave oppression, unity has been , the only weapon, but in those cases where oppression has been pfesumeS'lfy parasites eager to batten on fomented .quarrels the proceedings have been as cruel and callous as wage slavery. The frivolous nature of some of the .reasons for ugly and protracted strikes simply show how v*ry close a grip the parasites have on their victims. To the parasites, the necessity of keeping plenty of disturbances in stock, so to speak, is simply a matter of "pocket." We have already seen that English miners refuse to aid their Wilsh comrades in a struggle that is for the betterment of the Welshmep only, and the resurrection of the old spirit of independence is taking place in other places than 'Melbourne. We regard the Widespread industrial unrest as* merely a phase in the struggle for the recognition of the individual and his worth. Under the present circumstances (which will presently disappear) one individual at.a specific occupation is allowed to be a counterpart in intelligence and worth, to every, other individual of a group—a most absurd proposition. As long" as' there exists a confused belief that "one man is as good as another," the intolerable idea that a poor exponent should be paid precisely as if he were a good one, the good will pare his skill down until it reaches the level of his poor fellow. Because these strifes are sapping individuality and real independence, men who have a little.left will presently gain more and the parasites drop off and die. Within the next ten years there will be a high death-rate among parasites and a saner recognition of individual worth, as opposed to the allege 4 worth of mathematical groups.