SOCIALIST PARTY.

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 338, 27 October 1908, Page 4

SOCIALIST PARTY.

At His Majesty's Tlieatro on Suuday night. Mr Robert Hogg gavo an address entitled "Toilors and Spoilers." Speaking'of unemployment, Mr. Hogg said that dry years and wet alternated as part of the scheme of "things entire," but bad years of employment eamo as a result of stupid man-made laws, and this fault could, and soon would, be altered. Protection was no . remedy, as conditions of labour were as bad in tho United States as in Frecrade Britain. Warehouses in all countries were full of food and clothing, but the • present system forced poyorty on people who produced commodities so .rapidly that they had perforce to bo unemployed until these goods were consumed. Production had never, in the history of the world, been so rapid or enormous, but novelhad tho creators of this wealth received so small a portion. The toilers were as much slaves as ever were the blacks, chained by the iron links of economic necessity to the Juggernaut of Capital. Rushing 'to work without the need of a whip, striving desperately to beat out their fellows, and rejoicing in, bis death, if they happened to got into his job. When tho toilers toiled;for themselves, good years would aliva.vs mean abundance for future years. • Full warehouses would finable them to rest in plenteous ease until more commodities were required, and bad years would bo safeguarded against by adequate reserves. This wan tho message of Socialism. To force discontent into the minds nf tho. toilers was the work-of all reformers, to make them see ihe sordiduess and dullness of their present conditions, and tlio immense possibilities, that lay before mieiety when it scientifically organised and conducted all its affairs. He called on Labour to study the position, to aixt-pt nothing I hat was not tho outcome of its own reasoning, and to take upon itself tho task of its own economic emancipation. In answer to a question, the speaker said that all values, of land and otherwise, were tho "property of the people collectively, and that for the people to tako them over would be both just and moral.