The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 31, 1912. INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTIONARIES.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 182, 31 January 1912, Page 4

The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 31, 1912. INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTIONARIES.

The people in the future who are the most likely take the keenest interest in the wonderful advance labor is making by organised effort are those who do not usually come under the category of "Labor," but who have to bear the brunt. It has already been shown that in some cases under new agreements between shipping companies and men that the "horny-handed" not only gets paid higher wages than ships' officers, but of course has fewer hours. It is unlikely that the ships' officers feel good about it. It is not. however, so much a question of the increasing bitterness of class against class that matters as the question of the purchasing value of money. In cases of very notable rises in wages to groups of workers, one need not hqld so much that the rises are undeserved, as that the whole community suffers. It may be a very fine thing for organised Labor to obtain a six-hour day (it is one of the planks of the Australian Labor platform) and for every unskilled laborer to get ten shillings for every six hours worked. It may be possible to extort even more from the men who have to pay wages. The inevitable happens. The general public, including the groups of workers who have practised successful extortion,, must pay increased prices for their goods. There is as yet no method by which a State, however wildly "Labor" it may be, can restrict the profits of companies or commercial concerns. It will be agreed that when a worker is able, by the use of his organisation, to extract a substantial addition to his income, tliat he should pay out for the things he needs in proportion as lie has benefited, but the vast mass of the public lias nothing \vhatever to do with organised Labor, and must bear the brunt of increased wages. Organised Labor moves on the assumption that it is absolutely indispensable to the public. It does not usually agree that the public is as necessary to it as blood is to 'human life. In a late manifesto the Xew Zealand Federation of Labor savs: "A section of that thoughtless and oftimes brutal body called the public will hurl denunciations at yon." The presumption is that organised Labor is the only real thinking machine existing. ''The thoughtless and brutal" public is entitled to be quite as selfish as the thoughtful and human labor machine. •The public may agree that specific workers are entitled to increases of pay, but where constant aggression costs the general public—who do not share in the increase of wages—a great deal of money, the innumerable folk who toil as usual (and at the old rates), while paying a great deal more money for the things they need, are entitled to ask where it is going to end. Many people are ex-

pressing tlie opinion' that the constant successes of Labor and its dominancy will i in time drive the wage-payers' shutters up. The cargo handler may demand five pounds a day with impunity if there is no cargo to handle, the operatives in any line of business may bellow for ten pounds an hour without'any heed being taken if the industries which have supported them close down and drag not only organised Labor but the great masses of unorganised workers with them. It is the great masses last mentioned who may yet take a hand and who will have a perfect right to know why there should be class dominancy. A phase of the question was happily touched on by a delegate to the Liberal Women's Conference at Hobart. In speaking of the evils of preference to unionists this woman said that she would like to see a secret ballot taken of tie wives of workers before a strike. It goes without saying that women would not vote for partial or complete starvation | for themselves and their children, eveil if they knew that the result' of a protracted strike would be an increase of wages—and a, decrease of spending power per sovereign. Until organised Labor is convinced that its movements, its aggressiveness, is condoned by the wives of the workers, the justice of many of its attacks will" remain in doubt. In, cases of wilful aggression merely for the sake of finding out how far the wage-payer may be pushed, the aggressor is treating the public exactly as the striker treats his wife and family. He makes the public the sufferer for his private grievances. In England in 1911 strikes cost workers one and a-half million pounds' in wages. As we know, revolt was justified, but there is the simple fact that because of these strikes innumerable women and children bore the brunt, and innumerable children simply died. There may be reason for the deepest pessimism in regard to the future and the possibility that Labor will insist on still further impoverishing Australasia, but we incline to the opinion that the more outrageous the demands of Labor become the sooner will the Commonwealth and the Dominion return to sanity. The leaders of these industrial revolutionaries affect to believe that Labor is still being badly trodden on. The reverse is 'the case in most instances. The public is being badly booted by Labor, and it is only a question of time before the public (that "thoughtless and brutal body") will overcome its meekness and institute a counter revolt. By all means, let justice be done to Labor, but also let justice be done to the other fellow.