The Daily News. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 1912. A NEW COMBINE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 95, 7 September 1912, Page 4

The Daily News. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 1912. A NEW COMBINE.

Those uncompromising apostles of the '•class war" who insist on the division of mankind into two sections—the exploiter and flie exploited—will probably .have little hesitation in placing the Private Boarding Establishment Association which our cablegrams record as having been established in Sydney, in the category of the exploiters. The habitual boarder, who is traditionally a person with a host of grievances, will heartily endorae the view of the militant demociat, and in proof of its correctness will make indignant allegations regarding the specific gravity of the boardinghouso steak, the diminutive size of the boardinghouso chicken, and the part played by hash in the boardinghouso economy. The boardinghouse-keeper, or, to give hei a title conferred upon her in an earlier and more gallant age, the landlady, if she is a worthy upholder of the traditions of her calling, will refute the base insinuations of the boarder, and will call upon high heaven to bear witness that is the real victim of exploitation. From the storehouses of her experiences she will tell of boarders whose boxes were filled with bricks, of boarders who were "expecting a remittance, which somehow never came, of boarders who pawned the sitting-room clock to buv beer, and of boarders who "ate her out of house and home." The development just reported from Sydney is perhaps part of that universal, movement towards class organisation which the Socialist tells us is inevitable, and it will be interesting to see whethyr the boarders will also become "class-con-scious.' The landladies having chosen to form ,-v "ring" or a "trust"—save the mark—the boarders will be forced into the ranks of trade unionism, and may be expected to prepare and submit a schedule embodying the principle of the right to eat. provisions for a minimum | meal, limitation of the metamorphoses of moat, freedom of access to the piano, abolition of the empty coal-scuttle and preference to unionists. The right-mind ed landlady and the boarder with proper instincts have always experienced a fieree joy in their little verbal duels, and now that the stage is set for a general engagement both parties can be expected to take an enthusiastic interest in th> frav.