A CREAT WELCOME.
Maoriland Worker, Volume 1, Issue 4, 15 December 1910, Page 1
About this newspaper
A CREAT WELCOME.
CROWDED MEETING OF WELLINGTON WORKERS. PETER BOWLING'S MESSAGE. His Majesty's Theatre, Wellington, contained a big audience full of enthusiasm, when Peter Bowling took the platform on Sunday evening to deliver a message to the wage-earners of New Zealand. As a preliminary, a resolution was moved extending a cordial welcome to the Australian Labour leader, and appreciation of his efforts in the cause of industrial unionism. The resolution also protested against the seiite/ice passed upon him by a class-biassed judge, and added its sense of indignation at the treatment meted out to the victim of panic legislation while in gaol. Aftssr waiting for the end of a round of applause, Mr. Bowling declared that the hearts as well as the pockets of the New Zealand workers had responded very readily to the call for sympathy from New South Wales. Hβ could not sufficiently express his thanks for the way in which the workers of the Dominion upheld the part of the deeecrated and persecuted miners of New South Wales. BLIND BIAS. Almost the moment on which he landed in New Zealand he was handed a paper in which it was declared that the Wellington Trades and labour Council, did not approve of his methods. Th's was before they had heard one word in justification, before they knew him personally. They held aloof, just as they had done with the previous representative (Mr. Mc Williams). They might be unionists, but it indicated the consciousness of the class fight in which he was engaged. He wished those men well. His mission was to benefit the wage-earners, the workers of the Dominion, to try and heal some of the breaches, but his mission was not to crawl to ar.y wage-earner or capitalist. (Applause). He knew what it was to have official unionism thrust against a man who wished to reach the hearts of the wage-earners. Btit simply placing their little nets in his pathway showed they did not understand a one-tenth part of the man they had to deal with. (Loud applause). He intended to reach the wage-earners to deliver his message and do all in his power to lift his fellow-man and make him master and ruler of the world. (Cheers). Probably his methods might be objectionable. He had no fault to find with those who objected to them, but why in the name of all that was fair and just did they not specify wherein he was deficient. Why had it been piiblished broadcast that the Wellington Trades Council disapproved of his methods A voice: Only one official. Mr. Bowling: Well, that official ought to be checked -or chastised or the Trades Council will cease to exist. (Loud applause). NO APOLOGIES. He had come to New Zealand not to apologise for himself, but to explain the facts of the position which led. up to the strike and his imprisonment. lie detailed the New South W?.les miners' long and vain wait for a peaceful «etilfruont of grievances. 'I he miners would have nothing to do with the Arbitration Courts for it was simply nominated by the Government, and was part and parcel of the capitalist machine. How could they submit their conditions to such .1 Court. Arbitration was unsound from the economic point of view because the value of wages being its purchasing power, an increased wage, accompanied by an increase in the price of necessaries. It was nothing that wages were increased so long as th-a econo.nic right to raise prices of provisions was left in the hands of the rich THE ONLY COURT. The men said to the employers: Meet us in open conference, with the Press present. Meet us yourselves, not by paid hireling that takes legal points. Argue your own case, and we are prepared to submit to the judgment of the only Court we will submit to—the judgment of the people," (Loud applause). That was the proposition they ?übmitted to the proprietors, and they came out upon it. This was the position, and the miners should have won but for the heavy forces arranged against the.n by the double-distilled cowardice and treachery of men who shoald have been in their own ranks.
