TRADES AND LABOUR.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 102, 2 May 1931, Page 15

TRADES AND LABOUR.

AUCKLAND UNION ACTIVITIES. (By INDUSTRIAL TRAMP.? UNION MEETINGS FOR THE WEEK. Tuesday, May s.—Seamen. Thursday, May 7.—Plumbers* Educational. Hotel Employeea Labour Representa- ; tion Committee. NEW SECRETARY Mr. J. Perry, formerly a member of the Gisborn© branch of the Amalgamated Engineering Trades, has been appointed secretary of the Auckland branch, of the Engineering Trades. Mr. G. T. Thurston, of the Christchurch branch, who has been carrying on the work of the Auckland.loffice at the Trades Hall for the past three months, left "for his home town on Thursday. Mr. Thurston is one of the Labour candidates for the Christchurch City Council election. LOCAL* BODY ELECTIONS. Next Wednesday, the.- biennial elections of local bodies throughput the Dominion will take place, and the Labour party candidates are figuring conspicuouslyJn the fray. In Auckland the party is having a straight-out bid for the Mayoralty, and?nine candidates have nominated for the 1 City' Council. For the Transport Board election, which is held for the first time- this year, there are five nominated for. the City, No. 1 area, and one for,the No. 2 (Mount Albert-Mount Eden) area. For the Hospital Board, there are three Labour nominations. The party candidates have been actively engaged-in open-air speaking in different parts of the extensive city area, on each night of -. the week, obeying the Scriptural injunction liter-., ally: "Go ye out into the highways and byways." At the Town Hall on Thursday, Mr. H. G. R. Mason, M.P., who has been prevented by the special Parliamentary session from making an earlier appearance in public, made his policy speech to a crowded meeting, and was favourably received. In the South, the party is equally vigorous in its campaign to get increased representation on the local bodies. THE FUSION PROPOSAL. ' : Next to municipal election matters, the interesting topic of the proposed fusion of the Reform and United parties has occupied the public mind this week. For.a long time past, the New Zealand Labour party, both inside and outside Parliament, has held the opinion that there is very little difference between the . declared principles of the two parties mentioned, and the sooner they came together the Ibetter it would be for themselves and the general •public, for everyone would then know where they stood. This opinion lias been stoutly contested by both parties; they declared that they had each high principles to Maintain, handed down to them -by their predecessors. There was, however, one policy that they both subscribed' to, and that was opposition to the demands of the Labour party, and when' Mr. Forbes, this week, made th© dramatic offer of the self-effacement of' the Forbes Government and a fusion of both parties, with a subsequent formation of a National Government, it was hailed with satisfaction by thotfe wh'ol had inspired the "confidential circular* which gave rise to the movement for fusion. But Mr. Coates has not received the well-meant overtures of the Prime Minister with any marked' degree' .of. acclamation, and many of his party are busily engaged in searching for "the nigger in the woodpile." The numberof United party members in the House at present is smaller than those constituting thei Reform quota, and hence, ithe looking for a motive, not yet apparent. The Labour party can afford to look on. If the fusion is brought about, Labour will again constitute His Majesty's Opposition in Parliament, and will know what opposition to meet in its policy.

HIGH WAGES POLICY. A writer in a recent copy of the "Christian Science Monitor" discusses the virtues of the American policy of paying high wages. He states that economic history is littered with laws and theories imposing severe limitations on wages'. The most dismal of these- was called the ■"iron law of wage*/' or the brazen jawj as Lassalle' described it. Expounded by many illustrious 'economists, it held that wages must .always tend to fall to the point where they will bo just sufficient to keep the "workers alives/./ These • laws, of 1 ' yesteryear (he ■says) fell like ninepins before the assault of social conscience. And it was social •conscience that uprooted ; the pre-war concept of wages and introduced the new standard that labour, should share generously as of rigbt in the increasing fruits of production. Bankers had attacked this theory lately, .but with small success. The payment of.high wages is regarded, as a. "root tradition of America." President Hoover opposed the banking complaint against the maintenance of wage schedules. Before the bankers' convention at Cleveland last year he said any departure from present scales would "be "a retreat into perpetual unemployment and the acceptance of a cesspool of poverty for* some large partoorf r our people:" The writer contends that the great output of American manufacturies has been largely caused by the "tremendous volume of consumer demand," which in turn was caused by the payment of high wages- A thousand and one industries owe their position to the ability of wage earners to buy things outside the category of necessities. The effects of their purchases between 1924 and 1929 had brought the very framework of American industry into dependence upon mass consumption. In this connection Mr. James A. Farrell, president of- the 1 United States Steel Corporation, recently stated: * "It. is my, deliberate judgment that a general reduction of wages in this country would set back the impending recovery by at least two years." In the opinion of the American writer, to recommend wage-cutting at this time is to miss the actual cause of business stringency. This is simply that supply j has outstripped demand. To remedy

this, ho continues, economic thought should logically be riveted on ways for increasing, not decreasing, demand. To this theory at least one leader of finance seemed to have given hid support. In his version of the setback to industry, Frank A. Vanderlip expressed the opinion that capital hasj received too much out of> production and labour too little. "Unemployment is used as an argument to show that the acceptance of" lower wages would diffuse employment to the jobless. Thus, it is contended, it would leave consumer demand unimpaired. This was a plausible but specious argument. Socially, it would ba a "retrograde step; economically, it wottld make for lower standards."