"THE APPROACHING CRISIS."

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 3012, 8 October 1908, Page 4

"THE APPROACHING CRISIS."

An Auckland paper discusses^the intdustnal situatiomas follows-::—"It is well for the late Mr Seddon that he is not here to-day to faae- the responsibility for the industrial disaster that must eventually overtake us as the conepquence-of hia policy of spoliation against the employeus, by which he managed to. keep himself and his co'feagues in. power' fer so many yea,rs. The secret of Mr Seddon 's success was his device- ©f setting class against ckss.. He stirred the cupidity of' the trade unionists, suggesting ami: accomplishing the mean - ; by which they could exact successive advantages at the cost of the employers, and alii the time inculcated the idea that rights Belonged only to the workmen. Mr Seddon kn«w that this sort of thing could not go 0:1 for ever. There was a point at which it must step or ruin the country and its people. And he, fully sensible of the danger of the approaching crisis, had begun to call a halt before he died. But the trades unionists, their lust for gain intensified by their previous exactions, were not prepared for a halt. They are insisting now that a perpetual campaign shall be waged against the employers, indifferent to the harm that

their policy is doing to the industrial interests of the; country. They do not want arbitration, but spoliation. And this constitutes the difficulty of J. A. Millar's position."