LABOR'S IDEAS.

Taranaki Daily News, 23 November 1921, Page 4

LABOR'S IDEAS.

If the ideas set forth by the delegates to the watersiders’ conference on Saturday night are shared by the forty thousand we are told comprise the present Labor Alliance, little real assistance can be hoped for from this quarter in this hour of the country's need. We afe told that any move to lower wages will be resisted, and the hope is expressed that the period “would arrive when the standard of living of the working classes would be raised, and when ... the workers would finally achieve working-class emancipation, and own what they produce.” The standard of living can be raised in one way only: by greater efficiency and output on the part of the workers themselves. High wages, we have seen in recent years, do not connote greater purchasing power and comfort; rather the reverse. The value of money is in w r hat it will buy. .The standard of living is not fixed by the wages scale; it consists of a certain standard of comfort, certain supplies of consumable goods. The real compensation of the worker for his own labor comes in the products and services of others. Whilst prices were advancing the Labor leaders were quick to claim that money was nothing but a medium of exchange, and did not represent their real compensation. They insisted upon wage increases to compensate for loss of purchasing power, and got them. Now the position is reversed. The farmer is in the same situation as they were then. His purchasing power has fallen off, and his standard of living has been lowered. He is back to pre-war prices, but is still expected to pay post-war prices for goods and services. The watersiders and miners have had a better innings than '•most workers. The increase in the cost of handling goods has almost doubled since 1914, and the same applies to coal. This does not mean that the wages in these occupations have doubled. The extra cost has come about largely by the lessened output that bigger wages almost invariably produces. Let the watersiders and miners, who constitute the biggest part of the Alliance of Labor, resolve to be more efficient and co-operate with the rest of the country, and economic rehabilitation will be advanced and not retarded. The cost of foodstuffs, etc., is decreasing, and so the purchasing value of money is correspondingly increasing. To enable industry to profitably continue wages must fall, though this does not mean any lowering of the standard of living. If Labor sets itself to maintain present wages and not give greater service, it will only produce more unemployment, not less, and the process of the “emancipation of Labor” will be delayed. If Labor owned all it produced it would not in some instances amount to a great deal; certainly not the compensation it is now receiving. That is a subject, however, we may refer to again. Meantime, we do not hear the leaders counselling their followers to put their full weight into the collar and thereby assist in putting the country on a sound, prosperous footing. On the contrary, we are afforded the spectacle of delegates to the conference meeting four hours daily for about ten days, dealing with matters that any other conference would dispose of in a couple of days. This surely is economic waste, but really indicative of what has been going on in the mines and on the waterfronts of the big cities for some time past.