The Dominion. SATURDAY, JULY 11, 1908. A PAID PARTISAN.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 247, 11 July 1908, Page 4

The Dominion. SATURDAY, JULY 11, 1908. A PAID PARTISAN.

It is greatly to be questioned whether Mr. Teegear" has not over-stepped his rights as a Civil Servant in making his annual report the occasion for a polemical discussion of a political question that is greatly agitating the public. Mr. Tregear is the servant, not of. a faction, but of the whole community; his salary is drawn from tho pockets of everybody; he is not paid to defend, in a partisan spirit, the doctrine of a clique, but only to administer with strict impartiality any Labour laws that may embody that or any other doctrine. What, exactly, is the position, of this highly-privileged official 1 If he a member of the " party in power " or a/Labour leader? Or is he simply a Civil .Servant like, for instance, Mr. Kensington, .Undor-Secrctary for Lands! If Mr. Kensington had last year embodied in the Lands Report a highly polemical discussion of " land tenure," and a strong defence,' on political grounds, of the " leasehold," even our leasehold friends would have been a good deal shocked. Is it any less shocking that a Departmental official like Mr. Tregear should range himself against what we believe is tho weight of public opinion upon the Arbitration Act, and use, as we may say, his official pen for the dissemination, at the public cost, of a doctrine that a great section of the public regards as highly pernicious 1 , '

No doubt attention will be called in Parliament to this most undesirablo uso of an official position. In the meantime, we must call attention to some striking features of this highly-coloured manifesto. " In my judgment," says the Secretary for Labour, '"'the principles underlying the Arbitration Act are impregnable, and have been practically unassailed." Does Mr. Tregear realise, we wonder, tho cool impertinence of such a statement? 1 His safety is in the fact that tho peoplo who have the temerity to differ from him 1 may hi too astonished to be indignant at this piece of presumption. . Mr. Teeqear's arguments are worth noting, however, for their evidence of the dangerous frame of mind of the Socialists. In effect, he claims that the present discontent of tho worker-—" vague- disappointment" is his ingenious gloss foj the outbursts, of the past year—is explainable by the too-high expectations of the workers. Tho Act, ho says, has done much for Labour—which nobody denies—but it has not prevented the employer from slyly raising prices and " appropriating" almost the whole value of a rise in wages." Tho Act was meant, he says, to " promoto industrial peace," and, " in the interests of civilisation," to " raise labour disputes from the arbitrament of force and tho arena of bitter strifo into a calmer air." Ho adds a good deal about " the waste of the world," and " Paradise," and " Arcadia," and "tho complex arrangements of modern life," which aro all very nice phrases for tho street-corner orator, but which are too rhetorical for a Depart : mental report.

This, then, is the crcecl of Mr. Tregear, and, wo suppose, of the Government: that too much was expected of the Act, but that it has done as much for the workers as could bo dono by " a singlo logislativo measuro," and must therefpro be retained. That tho employer has any claim to consideration does not appear to have occurred to Mr. Tkegear at all. The Act has certainly exerfcod to the full its power to tic the employer up vory tightly. But, considered with an eye to all its powers, it has not only not done all that a singlo legislative measuro could do; it has not even been allowed, or been able, to do what it might have done for the employer. Has it prevented strikes? Has it cvon discouraged strikes ? Has it given the employers the peace that it guaranteed to them? Has it, in short, done anything but give Labour a weapon in supplement of the power to strike? By neglecting to consider these questions, Mr. .Xbeqeas has avoided the real issue.. It

is highly significant that the only "disappointment " that ho considers worth notice is the disappointment of the worker. But, of courso, the employer is trash anyway—a cumberor of the earth. We think we seo what Mr. Tkegear means when he says, with a papal air, that " in 'my judgment the principles underlying the Arbitration Act aro impregnablo and have been practically unassailed." He means that it really is a splendid weapon to batter employers with, and so it is. But the public's measure of " unass.ailability " is not. Mr. Treqear's.