THE WORKERS AND THE SOCIALISTS.

Press, Volume XLIX, Issue 14666, 15 May 1913, Page 6

THE WORKERS AND THE SOCIALISTS.

In a letter, which we print to-day, a correspondent takes us to task for what he thinks is "too much bitterness" in our "criticism of the worker." Our astonishment at this rebuke disappeared when wo found that his best attempts to be specific loft our correspondent with nothing more definito to say than that our articles "are not freo from a feeling I cannot describe." Tho case of "Farm Labourer" is easy to diagnose. Accustomed to hear a certain , set of newspapers and politicians disguising their affection for the small caste of professional Labour bosses as a concern for "the worker," our correspondent, and perhaps many other people, have got it into their heads that every hostile criticism of the Labour bosses is an attack upon the worker. Such people require only a word to set them thinking out the subject afresh. In tho first place, there is' not —and,' indeed, there simply could not be—anyone in New Zealand, so foolish as to display hostility to th*** worker, for the very simple reason , that of all those capable of work, not more than one in a hundred is not a worker. We are practically all workers. If exception be taken to this estimate as including men who work for themselves (and it is a quite unreasonable objection to raise, for a man who works .for himself may work harder and more faithfully than if he wore working for someone else, and may be a more useful and productive member of tho community), we can substitute the fact that of the breadwinners in New Zealand, 231,653, or two-thirds of the total, are wageearners. To indict the workers would bo to indict the nation, which is an enterprise that only a lunatic would engage in, and there would be none to listen to him.

This brings us- to a point which is too often overlooked by the thoughtless, or suppressed by those with dishonest ends to serve. Who are "tho workers?" Wo mean, who are "tho workers" in tho meaning of the term as employed by the Labour "bosses" and their flatterers in other parties? They are obviously not the general body of people who work. They are only those workers who support the so-called "Labour movement." This impudent assumption that only those are workers who support the Labour demagogues is an insult to all those industrious people who repudiate Socialism and tho extreme policies of the "Labour" leaders. We need not expect that the Labour bosses and their sleeping partners in the old "Liberal" camp will give up their little trick of representing as the workers the small section of tho community to which tho organisers look to provide them with a living. We *have said many times before, and we repeat it now, that the "Labour" Party is entirely unrepresentative of tho honest working men and women

of this country; and when wo condemn tho insincere and injurious professions and activities of the LabourSocialists, we are obviously no ruoro referring to the mass of tho people of this country than to the inhabitants of another planet. Facts, and the truth of things, cannot for long be kept, as it were, out of office, and we do not intend to leave tho casto of Labour-Socialist demagogues uncriticised just because some people havo not succeeded in realising that the workers or the people are tho whole community as opposed to a small professional caucus.