BISHOP JULIUS.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2073, 17 July 1890, Page 4

BISHOP JULIUS.

!he Bishop of Christchurch, speaking at a meeting concerning early closing of shops, in Christchurch said :

The question of shorter hours for shop assistants, I may say, is only one part of the development of that great labour question in which every in- 5 telligeut man takes the deepest interest as it progresses day by day. Wfiview it with a certain amount of alarm—we cannot help doing so —but also with a certain amount of hope. The great labour question, of which this is but an outgrowth, is now making itself felt in every country, in every town, and in every trade. The labour organisations are growing and determined', and will insist on lighter hours and heavier wages—(loud applause) wait a bit till you bear the finish of the sentence—than are sonsistent with market wages. It is quite possible you will admit, for meu to ask more than they are worth under present circumstances, aud when they come to press and get an advance in wages and shorter hours, then people predict the breakdown of our commercial system. Ladies and gentlemen, there is looming in the not distant future great and terrible changes. If we look at them and see that the commercial system which has existed for some 300 years is not consistent with trades unionism what will follow F If men are asked for shorter hours and heavier wages than can he granted under the present commercial system, 1 ask again, what will follow ? Some people say chaos,universal bankruptcy, and breakdown of all commerce, and a; harking back to’a condition of aemiharbarisra. I don’t, believe it for a moment. What I hope will break down is the system of unhealthy competition. It will break down the millionaires. The sooner the better, say I. It will break down the system of monopolies and commercial speculation. The sooner, the better. It will break down the long existing between capital and labour, ! and the sooner the better also. But are we only to have breakin" down ? I do not think so. I “look abroad on what is going on, what is taking place amongst us, and pp.o signs of building up. I see it in the popularity of such works as “ Looking Backwards.” If, however, the theory which is laid down in “ Looking Backwards ” is to be carried into practical effect I see, too, that the clergymen will have a great deal of work to do during the next hundred years or so in the direction of endeavouring to work a change in the human heart, for we are a pack of selfish creatures after all. Then I see the signs of a desire to build up, in the articles which appear in our daily papers with regard to communities socialistic aud communistic. I see it ip. tpe railways —which in this country are splendid affairs —aud in the Post Office system j but you may rely upon it that when the btate gets bold of you, my boys, there will he ao strikes for you. I see it in the spread of the i principles of co-operalion, in which I \ moat thoroughly aud sincerely believe.

It has been kept back by jobbery and corruption, but it still has managed to cotnelo the front. All these, ladies and gentlemen, are signs of the construction of a new system which will take the : place of the old system of coin inerce, and the perpetual conflict which has been waged between labour abd capital will come to an end.