INDUSTRIAL UNREST

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 147, 18 December 1913, Page 3

INDUSTRIAL UNREST

PRESBYTERIAN ASSEMBLY'S v ATTITUDE "COMPACT-BREAKING SINFUL." (BT KUBQRAPH— PRESS ASSOCIATION.) • CHRISTCHURCH; 17th Dec. The Presbyterian Assembly adopted, without discussion, and by 70 votes to 38, a motion regarding industrial unrest. The motion includes these paragraphs : — "That in view of the widespread industrial unrest, of which the New Zealand strike is only a phase, the Assembly records its profound sympathy with all just claims of Labour, and its conviction that beneath the world-wide upheavals are great moral impulses and appeals which cannot be ignored. "The right to earn a fully adequate living is a right which cannot be disregarded, but the Assembly would also rocord its conviction that employers have rights as valid in the sight of God as those of the employed . It holds that all compact-breaking, whether by , employera or employed, is sinful, and subversive of social welfare ana progress. The Assembly profoundly deplores and condemns every attempt to subvert legitimate authority by violence. "The Assembly is persuaded that fuller and clearer recognition on the part of the wealthy of the responsibilities of wealth is urgently demanded, as is also the ending of the caste system which, with the artificial distinctions it draws between claes and class and between man and man, is probably in no small measure responsible for tho seething unrest of our time. "The Assembly, while, disclaiming any right or competence- to offer expert opinion as to purely economic factor* in the problem of industrial unrest, desires that enquiry should be made as to the value of the propsals : — "(1) That -private- ownership. of great public utilities tends to monopoly inimical to the welfare of the community, and that these, therefore, should be nationalised and put under control of the State. The question should be faced whether this could be done and still leave sufficient room for private enterprise and the development of individual initiative. "(2) That some form of voluntary cooperation or profit-sharing between employers and employed is desirable, probably as the next step in the evolution of social organism."