INDUSTRIAL UNREST.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXV, Issue 10713, 18 December 1913, Page 5

INDUSTRIAL UNREST.

OPINION OF THE CHURCH.

IMPORTANT RESOLUTION

(By Telegraph—Prett Association.) CHRISTCHURCH, Last Night.

The Presbyterian Assembly, adopted, without discussion, by 70 votes to 88, a motion regarding the industrial unrest. The motion includes the following paragraphs: "That in view of the widespread industrial unrest, of which the N.Z. strike is only a phase, this Assembly records its profound sympathy with all just claims of labour, and the conviction that beneath the worldwide upheavals are great moral .impulses and, appeals which cannot be ignored. The right to earn a fully adequate living is a right which cannot be disregarded; but the Assembly would also record its conviction that the employers have rights as valid in the sight of God as those of the employed. It holds that all com-pact-breaking, whether by employers or employed, is sinful, arid subversive to social welfare and progress. The Assembly profoundly deplores and condemns every attempt to subvert legitimate authority by violence. The Assembly is persuaded that a fuller and clearer recognition on the part of the wealthy of the responsibilities of wealth is urgently demanded, as is also the ending of the caste system, which, with the artificial distinctions it draws between class and class, between man and man, i*s probably in no small measure responsible for the seething unrest of our time."

"The Assembly, while disclaiming any right of competence to offer expert opinion as to purely economicfactors in the 7 problem of industrial unrest, desires that inquiry should be made as to the value of proposals: (1) That private ownership of the great public utilities tends to monopoly inimical to the welfare, of the community, and that these, therefore, should he nationalised and put under the control of the State. The question should be faced whether this could be done, and still leave sufficient room for private enterprises and the development of individual initiative. (2) That some form of voluntary co-operation and profit-shar-ing between employers and employed is desirable, probably a<s the next step in the evolution of our social organism."