"MORAL OBLIQUITY."

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 74, 14 August 1912, Page 6

"MORAL OBLIQUITY."

(To the EditoT.} Sir, —I have noted your reply to my letter in your iseue of the 10th, in which \ ou state that I am suffering from "moral obliquity," the Bame as 'the Red Federationists ar,e. As it is a natural inheritance I hope you will overlook it, for I have never knowingly seen a Red Federationist or corresponded with one. Now you know thai the men went out in the beginning for majority rule, that was their demanded condition, and you must admit it a reasonable one. The insinuation in your words re conditions and wages is that the only thing a workman can want is wages and working conditions. The men wanted another condition, and refused to sell their labor until they got it. If the position in Waihi is so dreadful why do not the mine owners or Conciliation Board or the Government step in and bring about the conditions the men are after, viz., industrial unionism, and thus bring order out of the present disorder? There was nothing more tyrannous in the action of the men than there is in that of a merchant who won't sell his goods for less than spot cash. Now as you count me as a wrongthinking man perhaps you will forgive me when I say that to destroy th« liberty, law and order we have in New Zealand would only be to change the present chaotic state to another chaos. I could give you many instances of chaos in your own province, not in any way influenced by labor, if the business of these lines demanded it. Remember, good things can only come from chaos, and .that all men that do not see eye to eye with yourself are suffering from "moral obliquity," and are wrong thinkers.—l am, etc., TENAX. 12/8/12. [We refer to this letter elsewhere.— Ed.]