AGITATORS AND LABOR TROUBLES.

Taranaki Daily News, 1 October 1917, Page 4

AGITATORS AND LABOR TROUBLES.

SOME PLAIN TAIiK. Prom Out Parliamentary Seportiw. Wellington, Sept. 27. In the House of Representatives thfl ; evening the Hon. A. L. Herdman nude » speech full of plain talk about agitators and labor troubles. He had teen takes to task about the methods of the police in searching the Seamen's Union prw? ises in Wellington. The Attorney if General replied that tmplpasafcfcnesi could not be avoided ip'these timet, ana that in any case something had been! found in the vicinity of the premise* that made' the search necessary. He def dared that all strikes were, caused bjf ' agitators who cared nothing for thefi duty to the country, the wine sort o| agitators who were now spoiling .the fair., fame of Australia and dragging in tho < mire the name made by Australia's soldiers. . Any Government that was pre* pared to do its duty must deal firmly with men of that kind. Mr. P. C. Webb (Grey) said that tba references to Australia, had been abso*. lutely unfair. What waa an agitator?. Every man who fought for a cause was an agitator. Mr. Herdman was an agitator on behalf of the Conservative people who had put him into Parliament. He , agitated for Conservative principles, just as Mr. Isitt agitated for prohibition. ' The secretary of the Employers' Awociation was an agitator, appealing to his class to organise With the object of combating nioije successfully the claims of the wording people. But a man became a vicious agitator, in the opinion of the Attorney-General, when he agitated on behalf of the oppressed. The truth waa that the high cost of living and the conditions of life of the workers made it the duty of every man .to-, agitate. Mr. Parr (Eden): Are strikes th« remedy?

Mr. Webb: No. Strikes to the'foody politic arc like festering sores on the human body. They we the reflex of a rotten, corrupt system. We know fhat strikes are a waste of energy and an economic loss. The game thing applies to war. We see millions of men being sacrificed and billions of money being spent and wc know that\it is wrong. But there are times when the nation must fight, and there are times when the workers must strike in order to improve their conditions a little. The root of the evil that produces strikes is the capitalistic system. The Australian strike, continued Mr. Webb, had been due to the introduction of an American system of "speeding up," which had never been tolerated by British workers. It had not been caused by agitators.' Its leaders were men who had not been on strike for many-years. The blarad had rested upon the Oovernment, which had tried to introduce in the railway service a system that even the American Government did not recognise. It was a Simple fact that men did not strike without cause, and that wise statesmen tried to ' adjust and not to repress. •