The Daily News. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 1912. LEANING ON THE OTHER FELLOW.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 191, 10 February 1912, Page 4

The Daily News. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 1912. LEANING ON THE OTHER FELLOW.

We hear in the colonies about "the right to work," but in many instances what is really meant is "the right to be idle," while the other fellow bears the cost. The general public has to spend more or i to earn more in order that the praters may obtain money they have not earned. Unearned wages "is as'big a handicap to the community as "unearned increment," because the public has to pay the unearned wages out of the wages it has itself worked very hard for. There is nothing, in our view, particularly noble about the workers in Queensland striking for the merest trifle in order that their fellow workers in Victoria or elsewhere, who are temporarily sympathetic, shall support the wives "and families of the heroes. Presuming that cessation of work at any time was a just protest against intolerable conditions, any fair person would admit the right of a" body of men to strike and the heroism of friends in supporting them with bread. But in no strike in New Zealand and in Australia for the past ten years has there been any valid reason for strikers to seek the charity of their fellows. It is not the hated capitalist—who may not have much money in the bank, after all —who will rearrange the conditions under which individual work will be the recognised standard, but the worker himself. No person is so intolerant of his kind as the worker, and the occasional pastime of supporting men who have ceased work without any real reason will soon pall. In fewer than twenty years, the motto will tie "every man for himself, and the State support the incompetent." This heavy leaning on organisation is simply an acknowledgment of incompetency, and tue majority of workers detest the suggestion that they are incompetent.