THE WEEK, THE WORLD, AND WELLINGTON.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9136, 11 July 1908, Page 7

THE WEEK, THE WORLD, AND WELLINGTON.

(By Frank Morton.) Tom Mann and the Strikers,—A 'Chance for Co-opebation.—Bacon, His Philosophy. The bakers' strike drags on, and •daily Mr Tohi Mann calls on all.true sons of toil to arise and complicate the trouble. Mr Mann loves a strike as a comfortable cat loves cream. IndeeJ, strikes are cream to Mr Mann. Cream seems to agree with him. His well-cut cluthe3 are comely and warm. His face shines with good cheer. He looks for all the world like a comfortable planter who has retired to live on his means in some temperate climate entirely to his own liking. Mr Mann's remedy for strikes is—more strikes. He wants all the operatives to strike, as ■a mark of their sympathy with the Wellington bakers. He wants to see Capital go out, and Co-operation come in. It has been reasonably

pointed out that in this bakers' strike £{ier.e is a rare opportunity for co--operation. Let the strikers set to and bake. Thej could command a read} sale for their bread. All the workers, one supposes, would buy it. All the profits would be their own. Capital would not come in anywhere. Necessary funds to start the bakery ran easily be advanced by the unions. Wy don't the strikers start? I don't know. But they don't start. They don't even seriously think of starting. They prefer to stand at the Queen's Statue in the drizzle and cry out their wrongs. I don't believe it io possible for married men to live with decent comfort in Wellington on the wages these men get. JLJut the workers are th'j authors of their own wrongs. Their biting greed has gone from rage to rage, till the time has come when they are virtually biting each other'in the neck. They have to reckon now, not with politicians or capitalists; hut with natural law. They have "boosted" their wages and the inevitable has resulted. Raise the price of labour arbitrarily, and you must raise the price of products. One thing follows the other inevitably, as the night the day. If these men had the courage to co-operate to-morrow, and to work honestly and hard in their own interest, they would find themselves little better off than they are now. The men, being of the ruck of men, are shallow thinkers. Their kaders, being of the ruck of demagogues, ate shallow readers. It takes a tiair.ed mind to detect a fallacy, and the minds of these workers aie not trained. Were it so, they would speedily recognise the ('anger of association with profession; 1 demagogues of any class. You will undtntand, of course, that I have no quarrel with philosophy. What I may call personal philosophy is an admirable thing. It is good to cultivate permanence of epicurean calm amid these slings and arrows of courageous fortune. _ It is good not to whine in public - though I, who am no perfect philosopher, have been guilty of the thing "myself befoie now. But it is had to try to twist other men to arbitrarily in the direction of one's own ideas and prejudices. Philosophy of that sort, fruiting in intolerance and waspishness and all the abominations of cruelty, is philosophy-in-counter-feit' There are, indeed, few <<f the great philosophers that one can read With any lasling pleasure. They are as a class too bloodless and too dry. Bacon nlways stiuck me as a very dreary felbw. Did you ever notice the sort of things Bacon vouched for and believed in? Here are a few -examples:—"The sound of bells will disperse lightning and thunders; in winds it has not been observed." 'lit is reported of Mount Athos, and likewise of Olympus, that in such a height no wind had blown for a year past. On the top of the Peak of Teneriffe, and on the Andes, there is nothing but a quiet and still air." ■"lt much used in extreme- and desperate diseases, to cut in two young pigeons yet living, and apply them to the soles of the feet, whereby fclloweth a wonderful ease." There /hath gone a report almost undoubted, ■of certain men that had great nose?, who have cut off the bunches or hillocks, and then making a wide gash in their arms, having held their noses in the pluce for a certain time, and so brought forth fair and comely noses." "They have a tradition in magic, that if a chameleon be burnt 'upon the top of a house, it will raise a tempest." I will t.till be pacient ;and pitiful when you tell me that Bacon wrote Shakespeare; but if ;you assert that Shakespeare wrotj Bacon, must straightway fetch me a 'tomahawk.