The Daily News. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 1912. PICTURESQUE FICTION.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 156, 19 November 1912, Page 4

The Daily News. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 1912. PICTURESQUE FICTION.

We have had so many illustrations locally lately of the utter irresponsibility of labor utterances at the mouths of tho j Red Federationsts that it is hardly sur- ' prising to find a reflection of them elsewhere. Mr. Beu Tillett, who is one of the least-considered but loudest-voiced agitators in labor circles at Home, has joined the little band of strangely bitter critics who are industriously maligning the Dominions and the Colonies in the Mother Country. He makes Australasia the special object of an attack which he has published in a London paper, and under his ingenious, if not over-scrupu-lous, treatment the immigration process assumes a truly horrifying aspect. The authorities at the Antipodes, lie says, are engaged in a. gigantic scheme for the "enslavement" of workers, who are "bought in _ herds like sheep" in the industrial centres of Britain. The custom, he says, is to "dump the immigrants down in the various ports Ot Australasia, where the menace of unemployment is already so great that thousands of skilled workmen cannot obtain work." The new arrivals find themselves stranded, and frantically offer their labor to the employers at cheap rates. Then other labor is "squeezed out of the towns by actual •tarvation, and forced to tackle forest and mountain on wages which mean starvation conditions." while all the time "the land sharks who stole the land become richer and more grasping. The unemployed are kindly allowed to sweat themselves to death," adds Mr. Tillett, warming to his subject, "and endure all the rigors of hunger and hard labor in order to increase the value of the land and to make the land-grabbers rich men. Australasia needs more wage slaves, so a, man and woman hunt is on. People are being bought like cattle/ and the gang that profit by the white labor slave traffic carry on their nefarious work with the connivance of the British Government. To-day every returning ship brings back hundreds of poor souls who are ruined and broken, but the shipping companies have made them pay for their passages back and so the shipping owners stand to gain double." This is just about as pretty an illustration of the intemperance of misguided enthusiasm as it would be possible to conceive, and while it may do some credit to Mr. Tillett's brilliant imagination, it does little to his intelligence. A happier, more contented, or more quickly-placed body of men and women, generally speaking, than those who have arrived in New Zealand, on their own initiative or under the system of State-aid, it would be hard to find. They are snapped up for good positions almost before they can board the wharves from the steamers, and the newspapers receive tesiimonies

to this effect irom desirable immigrants almost daily. Of course, Mr. Tillett's tirade does not count for a great deal out here, but it is liable to do harm at Home unless flatly and responsibly contradicted. He concludes his ridiculous and irresponsible homily by warning intending emigrants that they had better stay at home. It seems a pity sometimes that a State is allowed no rights under the libel law.