LABOUR AGITATORS.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume III, Issue 108, 28 September 1901, Page 3

LABOUR AGITATORS.

TO THH EDITOR. SSrit,— I read with interest your report of what Mr Ward said at the Farmers Union meeting on Saturday about the labour agitator* making more money at that than working, and preferring the working up of " disputes " to hontst toil. Perhaps your readers may be interented in the following extract from the M.r cintile Record of August 10 h ;■—" In the four centres the Conciliation Beards are kept steadily at work, and industrial disputes hare become chroma in. New Zealand. Before the Act came into {ore? a trade dispute was ■>', rare, occurtance, and a strike was equally rare ; bu fc liuce this so-called reform measure came into operation disputes of a kind have be m constant. The fact is the Act has let loose up«n the community tho labour agitator, who is above all others the most contemptible in the country. And in the very nUare of things this must be *o. It is his business to spy and re: ret cut faults that are likely to add to his income. He works upon the credulity of his fellows and flaunts .the Arbitration and Conciliation Act ia their faces; he assures them that they are fools if they do not take advantage of the beneficent provisions of the Act; higher wages and shorter hortrs are within their reach if they would only combine and file a dispute wi-.h the Court. He is ready to de the work of organising, and see that their cast is properly laid before the constituted tribunals. Not for nothing. Some »0f tlhose agitators are making more money than many of the employers and the Stite encour»ge3 them in their dirty work. It would be no exaggeration to say that but for these interfering agitators not a tanth of the disputes that have been before the Courts would have got there, because not a tenth of the disputes that are reported in the daily ; papers h*ve reason or justification as a buiai"—l am» etc., j LoOKER-ON.