CENSURED BY LABOUR.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 57, 30 November 1907, Page 4

CENSURED BY LABOUR.

There is an element of humour, in Mr. J. A. Jd'Cullough's appointment to the Conciliation Board, and his sudden elevation from the rank and file of State workers to tlie dignity and affluence.of £500 a year and £1 a day travelling expenses. Nobody, excepting perhaps here and there a Labour leader who may have missed the opportunity of a notorious martrydom, will grudge Mr. M'Cullough cither his dignity or his affluence; most people who know him will feel confident that he will prove a zealous and earnest representative of Labours The humour of the situation is in the noble reward of "persecution," and it is obvious that we shall all be joining Mr. M'Cullough and his friends'in their chuckles. Whoever may have drawn the Government's attention to Mr. M'Cullough's breach of the Civil Service regulations —we had almost said the uproarious obviousness of his activity—did him a very kind turn. One would almost suspect that it was some far-seeing friend of Mr. M'Cullough who spurred the Government into action,, and sot in train, the uproar, the wailing and the cry of " persecution" that were bound to give the subject of it a fame that would make his elevation in the eyes of Labour a foregone conclusion. most modern martyrs, Mr. M Cullougk has done very well out of his troubles. But there is a serious aspect of the appointment which may easily be overlooked. It is impossible that the ranks of organised Labour are so destitute of men fitted for election as the workers' representative on the Arbitration Court bench that Mr. M'Cullough was the only possible successor to Mr. Slfitar. Ho was clearly not the only ".eligible/' either beiore or after his

troubles began. His election, therefore, is Labour's protest against the Government's proper decision not to grant Labour a special exemption from a general rule of tlie public service. But it is more than a protest: it is Labour's warning, and the Government is sufficiently conscious of the nature of its relations with Labour to understand the warning. For years past the trend of legislation has been in the direction of giving effect to the demands of the workers, and Labour has received so much encouragement that it no longer sues for charity, but demands concessions. And now, in the American phrase, it is shaking a big stick at the Government for kicking over the traces. The Government, eveu prior to the M'Cullough affair, had been showing signs of an imperfect appreciation of its obligations to Labour, and the M'Cullough affair was the last straw. The Government may consider itself censured by Labour.