EXIT TOM MANN.

Auckland Star, Volume XL, Issue 123, 25 May 1909, Page 4

EXIT TOM MANN.

The Broken Hill strike is now over, and the men having secured from the Arbitration Court practically all that they were contending for, have returned to work. But now that the fight is won they are beginning to realise that industrial warfare is a terribly expensive way of settling disputes, and that the hundreds of thousands of pounds wasted in lost wages and profits during the past few months might have been in large part caved if they had only acted more judiciously and discreetly. Reflections of this sort are bound to set up a reaction against those chiefly responsible for the recent course of events, and not unnaturally we find the workers coming to the conclusion that they have been the dupes and tools of the agitators who encouraged them to carry the quarrel to extremes, and who have practically caused the trouble by insisting upon the necessary antagonism between Labour and Capital. Foremost among these professional delegates is the notorious Tom Mann, and it is highly significant of the condition of public feeling among the workers on the Barrier to-day that the combined unions have given Mann a week's notice of the termination of his engagement as organiser. No doubt Mann and his friends will ascribe this change of front solely to the selfishness and ingratitude inherent in human nature; and our readers will have observed that with characteristic egotism Mann has already compared his changes of fortune to the Entry into Jerusalem and the Crucifixion. The monstrosity of the parallel is most suggestive; for Mann is evidently a megalomaniac of a very dangerous type. The judge who last week sentenced Holland to a heavy term of imprisonment for inciting to violence during the recent strike told the prisoners and the public that the men had chiefly to blame Mann for their troubles. But we may reasonably attach far more weight to the verdict of a distinctively Labourite organ such as the "Bulletin," which has constantly denounced Mann as a stirrer up of strife. It is an evil day for Labour when men of this type arc in the ascendant, and if the workers on the Barrier can only keep Mann and "walking delegates" like him outside their ranks, they will have taken a long step toward that harmonious co-opera-tion with their employers which it is to the highest interest of the wageearners to secure.