RED FED. HUMBUG.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXV, Issue 10713, 18 November 1913, Page 4

RED FED. HUMBUG.

The Red Federationistg held a demonstration in Wellington on Saturday afternoon, when a number of remarkable speeches were made —remarkable for their audacity and absolute disregard for the truth. One of the speakers was a "Mr Keir," who is said to have been formerly a member -of the Shearers' Union in sfche Wairarapa, and who resigned from that body because its executive would not allow \he call to go to the members of the Union to support the strike. This is what this individual had to say:— <

"He had just been round the Wairarapa, where the men realised that the fight on the waterfront was their fight. Those who had come to baton the strikers back to work were only the employers. In Masterton a firm received an order for batons, and an apprentice was instructed to make them. When he found out what they were, he refused) to go on with the job? His employer stated that he would discharge him, but the boy complained to the engine-driver, and the result was that the men interviewed the boss, who said he would throw the order out. It was passed on to an undertaker, who had three beautiful 10ft by 12ft plate glass windows. 'They are no longer beautiful,' added Mr Keir. In supporting the principle of organising, the speaker said that there was not a reform secured in the history of the world that was not the direct result of agitation."

We do not know who are the men who realise that the fight on the waterfront is their fight. It cannot be the shearers, because, as this man Keir says, they will not obey the "call." The only men that we can suggest as regarding the waterfront light as their fight, are those patriotic young fellows who have gone to the city to maintain law and order, and to work the wharves. The statement that those who have gone to Wellington are "only the employers" is a deliberate falsehood, while the story about the plate glass window is one over which only desperadoes and dastardly wreckers would feel proud. It is astounding that sane and: intellectual people ean be found to swallow the outrageous statements made by designing But there will be an awakening one of these fine days, and the leadens in this wretched strike will be anathematised by those who are now too eager to applaud their utterances.