The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 1914.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVI, Issue 185, 4 February 1914, Page 4

The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 1914.

The recent strike of municipal workers at .Leeds, mid tile threatened strike uf> Post OfTijr.e employees just before dir*'mas, has produced some alarm in tin; Old Country, and this alarm finds expression in the more cautious newspapers. It is contended that the Labor tendencies of late years and the. attiture of the Government towards Labor disputes, are of a disquietening' nature, and it is argued that recent events demonstrate the unwisdom of increasing the number of .State and municipal activities, since such increase would only add to the facilities for paralysing trade and industry at the bidding of the trade unionists and syndicalists. Tor example, this is how the Investor* Chronicle viewed the situation:—

'■Until quite recent years, capital and 1 labor were making good progress towards voluntary conciliation. Mutual respect was growing'. Strike® were diminishing. Now we are moved in the opposite direction. We are getting increased Government interference and a. network of statutory wages boards. Bureaucracy is overshadowing industry. . . . . . Largely as a result of mistaken legislation and intereference, the relations between capital and labor aro strained in several eases, find, wlien tho coming depression is upon us, and wages •have to be reduced, we may liave a series of bigger and bitterer than those lately experienced. Then the cry for compulsory arbitration may be loudly raised, and the State may find itself committed to that policy before it knows where it is. It is time to take stock. Too much Government intervention has aggravated rather than alleviated industrial problems." j Another danger is inferred to by the | Daily Express in writing of the threat- I encd Post Office strike. It points out j that the postal employees appeared 10 j have a crude theory that they were entitled to a share of the profits of tho Department. In the ease of private [ employees we sometimes hear similar I theories advanced. With regard to the British Post Office, an agitator ia tho course of a speech said that the profits of the Department amounted to £6,000,000 a year. "Think how moderate we are," he exclaimed; "we only desire to appropriate two and a-halt millions—we leave the Treasury with three and a-lialf." Hut (asks tho Express) if this principle of determining' the relation of capital and labor in the Post Oflice be adopted, and the clnitaa of the workers 'be determined, not in relation to economic conditions, but to aribtraory ideas of Socialist rights, why should any money be left in the Trear Miry ? "Let the Postmaster-General accept this basis of mutual arrangement; let him admit that the rights of the taxpayers need not be. considered, and that a. particular set of public servants aro entitled to an endowment of | two and a-half millions without reier-

ence to the market price of labor, or the easy recruiting of the service, and the next Postmaster-General will inevitably find himself summoned to yield up the whole of the profits." There io. of course, sound sense in these remarks, by contrast with the rank nonsense talked by the agitators. It is such wild talk that hinders the reform of economic conditions more than anything else. Sane reformers see much hope of betterment in the nationalisation and municipalisation of pubic services; there are worse things advocated than the nationalisation of the railways and the mines of Great Britain; but there can be no 'hope of the Government undertaking the control of these concerns if the workers are ready at the call of irresponsible agitators to demand that all the profits of operation be distributed among them as wages, and failing compliance with the demand to "down tools" and' throw the whola work of the country into a state of stagnation. The workers mast be more careful in their choice of leaders and must disavow the sentiments of spoliation so glibly uttered by men who are ignorant of economics and devoid of all sense of moral obligation. Unless they do this and keep their agitation to rational and constitutional lines, they will provoke a policy of reaction and retaliation which will certainly have most: deplorable consequences. The bulk of the workers at Home, as well us in this country, are sase and reasonable, and so far, fortunately, their counsels have prevailed; but. the folly of their leaders 'has several times of late brought the masses perilously near to lawlessness and disorder. It is time that the sane majority asserted themselves and took charge of things, instead of allowing the extreme and rabid minority to drag thorn to the verge of disaster.