Plain Talk to Unionists.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XII, Issue 3814, 19 May 1891, Page 2

Plain Talk to Unionists.

At the Eight Hours' Demonstration in Melbourne on tho 22nd ult., Mr Benjamin Douglas, preiidont cf tho Eight Hours Pioneer Association, laid the foundation stono of the eight hours memorial, and at the subsequent banquet spoko some plain w truths. He expressed bis deep regret that < the position had altered so muck since their last gathering. _ Ihon tho affairs of the colony wore bright and prosperous. Trade was good, and money easily obtainable. At present trade was depressed, and money hard to get. la a few months the colony had been brought to a condition of complete dilapidation.—(Cries of " No.") He attri. buted that to the unsettled state of the labour market, brought about by the machinations of a few mißohief.making agitatora —(Hear hear). Ho said that fearlessly, and, as a pioneer, he was not afraid to speak his mind, either in the presence of those men or in their absence. As a matter of fact, he would not be allowed to say anything before them with which they dia agreed. If he attempted to do so ho would be howled down.—(Hear, hear.) Thatwftß what they called an "intelligent domo eraoy." These men encouraged strikoa ; they led their fellow men astray ; and hundreds and thousands of men were groaning under the tyranny of those men who had falsely led them.—(Cheers), He advised his fellow working mon no longer to follow those agitators, who were parasites on the institution which the pioneers had created. Most of them lived on their wits, and not by honest industry, He would challenge soma of those miechiovoua leaders to prove that they had ever done an honeßt day's work.—(Cheew). They had i fad fro muob evfay lgng enough, niiin ■'

time had arrived when they should be exposed, and their nefarious conduct in leading their fellow-men into difficulties revealed. When an honest, hardworking mechanic drew attention to the way in which these men were acting, and by constitutional means tried to secure the reform of a certain institution, how was he ' suggestion was never allowed to be debated. The closure was applied to strangle discission. Like the boycot, the closure was on-British and tyrannical.—(Cheers). One Victorian statesman, who had departed, and was forgotten and unmourned. had ruined his reputation by introducing it.— (Cheers). It had been used too freely amongst the working men, but they were now beginning to feel that those who bad so often used it for their own ends would lead them astray unless they were got rid of.— (Cheers). Victoria was indeed a paradise for the working men until those individuals developed, and he urged the laborers to allow wisdom to prevail, to exercise a little common sense in the conduct of their affairs. Then the present state of things would pass away, and the colony would revert to the position it held twelve months before. Notwithstanding all they had done, pioneers had been insulted by those men who were reaping what they had not ■own, and enjoying the fruits of the exertions of the men that they now flouted. —(Cheers.)