GERMAN INFLUENCE?

Evening Post, Volume XCI, Issue 146, 21 June 1916, Page 7

GERMAN INFLUENCE?

(PROM OUE OWN COERESPOKDENT.)

SYDNEY, 15th June.

One can understand that Labour Federal Ministers are greatly vexed over the persistence of industrial1 trouble at the .Commonwealth Clothing Factory established with considerable boasting in order to meet a considerable portion of the great demand for clothing for our expeditionary troops. In an address given the other day to the assembled employees of the factory the Acting Prime Minister and Minister for Defence, Senator Pearce, sought to spike the guns of 'the leaders of the disaffection amongst them by saying that he believed that "the sinister influence of German capital" was at work at the factory. It appears, however, that Senator Pearce failed in his purpose. Instead of securing the "turning down" of the agitators he has been confronted with'a resolution passed at a meeting of the employees setting forth that they emphatically protest against and repudiate the aspersion that they ara under German influence. The resolution proceeds : "We condemn Senator Pearce in that he, knowing that disaffection is rampant throughout the factory, does not call a conference of employees, but takes the absolute word of the manager, and we point out 'that this labour establishment is prone to failure because no discretion was shown in appointing a manager out of sympathy with Labour's aims and objects." There are 700 employees at the factory.