TOPICAL READING.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8377, 11 March 1907, Page 4

TOPICAL READING.

The Government of Uruguay has introduced into Congress a very liberal measure for the regulation of labour. The message accompanying it urges that Uruguay should take advantage of the fact of being a young nation to correct the vices and defects of labour legislation and that steps should be taken to prepare the republic of Uruguay to hold a distinguished rank in the comity of nations. The Bill provides for a ninehour day in most trades during the year following the enactment of the measure and an eight-hour day in all succeeding years. Sunday rest is made obligatory. No persons under thirteen years of age are to be employed. Fines will be imposed on masters or men infringing the law.

In view of the attempts made in some quarters to prove that British trade and industry are declining (writes the Adelaide Observer) it is satisfactory to be told by the Victorian Chief Justice that from all that he saw and heard during his recent visit to the Old Country he came to the conclusion that Great Britain has never been more prosperous than it is today. Sir John Madden reached England at a time when a good many people were disturbed by statements as to the alleged decadence of the Mother Country. He shared in that feeling, but he soon found that the supposed decadence was a myth. The figures given by Sir John are very instructive, and fully bear out his conclusion. It is, as he says, ludicrous to talk about decadence in the case of a nation whose trade is increasing! year by year, and whose imports and exports last year exceeded the enormous amount of £1,000,000,000. Cotton manufacturers are adding to their plants, and shipyards are in full work, and in 1905 the British manufacture and export of iron and steel was double that of the United States.

The visit of the Ameer of Afghanistan to British India has been the great event of the year in England's Oriental dependency. Afghanistan, "the land of stones and blood," is an isolated little country, broken barren; and the Ameer's capital is little more than an armed camp among the bleak northern hills. But as an outwork on the northern frontier of India the value of Afghanistan to England is almost incalculable; and much of, England's diplomacy on the Middle East has centred round the integrity of this "buffer state." The difficulty has always been that England has not been prepared xo enter into an unconditional alliance with the Ameer, and this hesitation, coupled with the constant aggressions of Kussia from the north, has made the Afghans doubtful of the value of England's friendship. The late Ameer, Abdur-Rahman, had leanings towards England, but he was apparently never sure that, in an emergency, the English would not sacrifice him as a scapegoat to Russian vengeance. Moreover, he had all the Oriental dislike for Western civilization; and it was largely in the hope of correcting or removing these doubts and suspicions that the ruling Ameer was induced to pay his recent visit to Calcutta.

This is the view that the Beacon, the Dunedin Socialist-Labour organ, takes of the strike of slaughtermen: —Anyone who took an intelligent interest in the working of the Act knew very well that it was only a matter of time when something of this sort would happen. If an employer finds that by an award he cannot pay the wages prescribed, he is at liberty to close down his works. If the profits in the industry do not permit of these wages being paid it would be manifestly unfair to ask him to pay them out of his capital account. All wages must come from profit account, not from the principal invested. If this liberty, then, is granted to the employer, to withdraw his capital, the same concession must be granted to the worker. Labour is the workers' capital, and if he concludes that an award is not fair and that his capital—that is, his labour—could be better invested elsewhere, he surely has the same right to withdraw as the employer has. We fail to see how it is possible to amend the Arbitration Act to meet cases like the ones which have just cropped up.