SOCIALISTS' MEETING.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 13651, 7 February 1910, Page 7

SOCIALISTS' MEETING.

"THE CLASS WAR."

In His Majesty's Theatre last evening Mr Scott Bennett gave an address on "The Class War." As an introduction to his address he gave a detailed definition of Socialism, and held out as the ideal of the Socialist the substitution of the social for the private ownership of the means of production. The war of the classes was between the numerically strong and economically weak and the economically strong and numerically weak —between the few who monopolised the means of wealth oroduction and the masses who were dependent on those few for the wherewithal to live. The interests of the two classes were absolutely opposed— thc one exploited the worker and the producer of wealth, and the other strove for higher wages and shorter hours. The speaker claimed that generally the worker had to auction his labour for a subsistence wage, and that a parasitical few revelled in wealth at tha expense of the mental and manual workers of the world. He pleaded for a broader Trade Unionism than existed at present, co that labour would I*- able to present a united front to capital. It was not individual "rcabs' who defeated labour, but thc organised "ecabbery" of unions. He declared against arbitration and conciliation as illogical and unnecessary, and contended that with ail its shortcomings th© old-timed strike was preferabJe. He distrusted both pulpit and Press as far as the interests of labour were concerned, holding that it was to the interests of both to support the capitalist against labour.

Prior to tbe meeting, some filmwere shown by Hayward's Pathe Picture Company.