CAPITAL AND LABOUR.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIX, Issue 102, 29 April 1908, Page 5

CAPITAL AND LABOUR.

CLASS RESENTMENT FOSTERED

ROOSEVELT'S MESSAGE TO

CONGRESS.

AN EPIGRAMMATIC CLIMAX.

(Received 8.18 a.m.)

NEW YORK, April 28. President Roosevelt, in a message to Congress, urges in. strongest terms the necessity for legislation limiting the use of injunctions in the case of! labour disputes, and also legislation increasing the power of the National Government to regulate inter-State business of the great corporations.

| The President protests against the growth of class consciousness, declaring that the abuse of process injunctions by I employers must breed class consciousness and, therefore, class resentment. While condemning the demagogue who preaches a crusade against wealth, Mr. Roosevelt caustically remarks that his counterpart is the hard, cruel multi-milr lionaire who was the least enviable and least admirable of America's citizens, whose son was a 'fool and whose daughter was a foreign princess.

[In several instances legislation favourable to Labour has been prevented by decrees of the Supreme Court declaring that such amendments were contrary to the principles of the Federal constitution. These decrees were made in injunctions issued by employers to restrain the enforcement of such legislation. In the course of conversation with a French interviewer last month, Mr. Roosevelt justified his crusade against plutocracy, which, he said, was the worst of regimes for any people, there being only one other equally detestable, namely, demagogy. Plutocracy, said the President, was the best ally of Socialism and Anarchy. "I am," he continued, "in my way a Conservative. That is why 1 fight against the abuses of plutocracy. I have told the workers that 1 am doing, and will continue to do, all that lies in my power, but for progress to be possible, it must be remembered that the first duty of the head of a State is to guarantee order. Order and reforms— no reforms without order." The President concluded by saying: "The dishonesty of a few of the wealthy paves the way for violence on the part of the poor. It must not be said that I am the enemy of wealth or of the people. I am the enemy of plutocracy and anarchy."]