OUR LABOUR LAWS.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIX, Issue 141, 13 June 1908, Page 7

OUR LABOUR LAWS.

(To the Editor.) Sir, —Said Colonel Denny, of Dumbarton, Scotland, the other day, that New Zealand legislation in labour matters did not recoguiso tho community of capital and labour, meaning, as I understand it, the common interest qf each in tho wellbeing of the other, of their mutual result. This is an intelligent outsider's, we will assume, unbiassed view, and it has not been sufficiently recognised that the New Zealand Government who are responsible for, and for tho carrying out, of their legislation, do not recognise this factor, and in my view, it has beea this which appeared likely to render many measures abortive or unhappy. Mr. Seddon, who in some things had an unusual insight, saw this, his successors do not. Anything which is not fair, honest, and just, must fail, and based as they are all this legislation is merely laboured on sand. Had Mr. Millar stuck to that book of all books which contains all that is needed oven for legislation to-day, he could have read warnings sufficient to have set him right, but he has not done so, and he is simply floundering on to wreck all; and his .party also. Let mc say 1 have been a worker for a long life; I have had bad and good masters to serve, the majority good, and let mc say that the average workjngman does not look on his master for the time as his enemy, does not wish him ±o be held up as such, knows he has his property to profit or loss in his hands as a trust, and desires to do for him justly and truly, and does not claim he is to be held up as an enemy. I am using my grandson's hand to write.—l am, etc., JAS. PERRY.