STRIKE FUNDS AND THE LESSON

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 113, 14 May 1914, Page 8

STRIKE FUNDS AND THE LESSON

TO THB EDITOR. Sir,— l am trying to digest the balancesheet of the late strike funds as published this week in the Maoriland Worker. It will take a lot of digesting, and if the average watersider does not suffer from indigestion after reading it, well, he should do bo. .- ¦The balance-sheet shows that from all over New Zealand £2600 was received— from Australia £3800 was received— both in round figures. A footnote Btates that if the amounts given to local relief committees were shown the New Zealand contribution would be higher. If the Red Federation could be taken on its own basis of its self-importance it should be higher, but when taken on the basis of common sense, it amounts to just about as much as the people of the Dominion hold it in esteem. According to the balance'sheet, the amount distributed in Wellington was £1450, plus £180 to the Moana and British seamen. While the strike was on it was repeatedly stated that plenty of money was available. I leave the watersider' to work out how far £1450 would go round the people who were out on strike. If the average worker spends 3s a week on tobacco it would just about cut out for baccy money, with nothing left to buy matches. The balance-sheet is a lesson to the workers of New Zealand. It is a lesson that breeds full of hope for the sane Labour movement. It shows that the trade unionists and the people of the country generally will not be gulled either by the plausibility of the Red ] Fed. organisers or by their official organ. It also shows that the Red Feds are anxious to affiliate with any other union or body that has financial standing. Its latest move, to affiliate with Australia, is shown by the balance-sheet. If Australia could subscribe £3800 for a cause that the New Zealander on the spot would only subscribe £2600 to— it shows that the Red Feds have a bigger lemon to squeeze over in Australia than they have in New Zealand. Let the unions who are being asked to attend the July conference beware ; let them look askance at these mighty pillars of unionism who have disrupted everything they belonged to — this Red Federation, which had the audacity to tell the secretaries in the trade unions that they had nothing to do but act like -porcupines with quills behind their ears. Let them bo earmark these Red Feds and their principles that no sheep dip will wash out the branding. The balance-sheet shows what true leadership is. The Red Feds, Social Democrats, or whatever you like to call them, took. over the management of the strike. They kept the watersiders out for close on eight we^ksi with £1460 in the till. If an average strike fund that could only pay for tobacco and matches was sufficient to keep men out for this period shows leadership, well, then, the men deserve to bo led by them till the crack of doom. Was it a sign of leadership that brought the Opawti men out and paid them £130 for coining aßhoro and having a good time while the vessel resumed her normal running and got Home? Was it good leadership to spend in expenses for executive meetings, etc., £200? The cost of administrating the strike fund was over £1000 (this includes travelling expenses to Australia), or a sixth of the whole, or, better still, if you like it, over 16 per cent. Legal expenses amounted to over £481. There must have been bad leadership for such a huge expenditure for legal expensesthere must have been a lot of law entanglements. There is an item of meals supplied to prisoners and strikers, £54 odd, and there is a credit balance as at 6th May of £253. There was the wife of one of the men gaoled saying in The Post the other day that she was finding it difficult for both ends to meet, and had several young children to support. The war, cry of the Red Feds during the late strike was solidarity. The solidarity rested on £1460. Plus this amount the strikers had available their own union funds, which amounted to a bit; this, too, has gone, so their solidness now rests on getting other financial unions to come in and help carry the baby, but the baby has been so often

fed through the aid of a strike^ feedii r bottle that every union with any senßO can detect its howl. The editorial in this week's issue of the 1 Worker ia headed " A Clear Cut Issue." The sooner a clear cut issue is made by the workers against the Red Feds and their methods the sooner will Labour be able to blaze a track that will need no red lights to show the way. The essence of the Red Fed movement has left for his , own beloved land, but the smell remains. It is trying to dilute itself by becoming mixed with the unionß that have carved their way by nieanß of evolution under the Arbitration Act. Let those unions beware lest the smell will permeate into the very foundations of unionism, and leave bucli a strong odour that public opinion will be up against them. / I would sooner be a Carey, working my way out by evolution, and get a six-day week for hotel workers and their thankß behind me, than t would belong to a revolutionary cause which kept men out on striko ¥ foe eight weeks and gained them nothing. Carey believed in evolution, and evoluted; the Hod Feds believe in revolution, and revoluted, and will keep on involuting until the main axle gives way for the want of oil, the lubricant that they haven't got the money to buy, unless they get it out of the unions at present unafliliated to them. Solidarity is the keynote of success in any cause, but to 'be solid one wants a solid foundation to build on ; to vilify justice, to vilify everybody and anybody who doesn't believe the same, is not a foundation On which to build. Tha £2600 speaks volumes— it shows that public opinion \is absolutely up against revolutionary methods, and will be while there are other methods of redressing grievances.— l am, etc., B ¦ UNITY. Wellington, 13th May, 1914.