Evening Post. WEDNESDAY, JULY 22, 1925. LABOURS DIAGNOSIS

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 19, 22 July 1925, Page 4

Evening Post. WEDNESDAY, JULY 22, 1925. LABOURS DIAGNOSIS

The procedure adopted by the National Executive of the New Zealand Labour Party in the resolution which we published yesterday is peculiar. The Executive had "considered the industrial troubles of Shanghai, China, nad decided'to protest strongly against the use of British Imperial forces against the civil population." Without the faintest attempi to summarise and analyse the complicated and perilous position revealed during the last few weeks> or to justify the conclusion arriVed at, the protest starts with the dogmatic assertion that "the trouble is essentially industrial." Having thus begged the whole question, the Executive adds that this essentially industrial trouble of Shanghai "has its origin in the conditions described in a report by Agatha Harrison, who worked in China for so many years." An extract from this report, which is also described as "Report of the deputation from the Federation of Women's Boards of Foreign Missions," follows and fills a whole column. Such essential details as the date of the report and the body to which it was presented are omitted, but we do not suggest that every word ' of the painful story may not have been true when it was written or may not be true to-day. An extract from a "trade paper" is appended which is said to require no comment, but the comment that both the name and the date of the paper are suppressed is not superfluous. The whole of the story told at such inordinate length in these two extracts may be perfectly true. Much of the foreign capital invested in Shanghai may be making inordinate profits, the wages paid are doubtless very low in comparison with European standards, the hours excessive, and the sanitary conditions hideous. But is it fair play or good sense to endeavour to stampede our feelings by unpleasant recitals of this kind in favour of a conclusion to which they are not shown to present any relevance whatever? "The trouble," we are told, "is essentially industrial," but, as already pointed out, no semblance of proof is offered. The statement is a mere "ipse dixit" in which the wish is plainly the father to. the thought. It is an article of faith with the Labour Party that the capitalist is at the bottom of everything.. From an axiom which in the eyes of the faithful stands in no greater need of proof than the self-evident truths of mathematics it, of course, must follow, "as the night the day," that the capitalist is at the bottom of the troubles in Shanghai. The possibility that outside of Shanghai China is suffering from equally grave troubles for which neither the capitalist nor the foreigner has no responsibility is not even considered. The legitimate and imperative requirements of the comparative method are completely ignored. The industrial conditions of Shanghai are not shown to be any worse than those of other Chinese towns, nor are they shown to have been made any worse by the intrusion of foreign capital, nor is it proved or suggested that if all the' foreign capitalists in Shanghai were murdered and their works destroyed—essential points of the insurgents' programme which the Labour Party would leave them free to carry out—the conditions of the thousands thus deprived of a livelihood would be improved. While the legitimate applications of the comparative method are thus ignored, it is applied with gross unfairness in a quite illegitimate fashion. The wage of forty to fiffcy-five cents paid to common labourers is cited as though it were another proof of capitalistic oppression, the implied comparison being*, ot course, with Western standards, though here again the only fair comparison would be with the wages pair, in otbrw parts of China or in other employments in Shanghai. If the wages paid by foreign employers are oppressive when measured by this test, why do not their employees go elsewhere ? and how is it that even with all the other agencies of unrest at work it seems to be only by intimidation and violence that a. successful strike can be engineered '! To. violence of (his kind the Laliouv Party** Executive takes no exception, Inifi i(, is oMuewJinfcly auiioua, Uw!,o .CJiiueee sorkera

should not be "cowed by a display of armed force" on the part of Great Britain and the other Powers interested, and thus "compelled (by the urge of starvation) to accept the degrading conditions of employment recited above." Talk of this kind is sheer nonsense. The only application of force which any British Government would venture to authorise in these days is for the protection of life, property, and Treaty rights, and there is not the slightest evidence that these proper limits have been exceeded in the present case. Protection of this kind is not merely justified, but it is absolutely essential if any of the reforms which the report above mentioned shows to be necessary are to be carried out.

In another striking application of the comparative method the protest of the Labour Party's National Executive lets the cat still further out of the bag.

The position in China to-day repeats, we are told, the history of the industrial revolution in Great Britain. At that time the British working people passed through the same horrors of destitution, oppression, and servitude. The Chinese are going through their abyss of despair to-day, but the lessons of history are that the nation, however powerful, which exacts tribute from th» weaker nation ultimately fades and decays.

It is a signal diagnosis which can identify two such utterly different things in complete disregard of all the acute troubles from which not merely Shanghai but the whole of China is suffering, and particularly of the special contributions which are being made by the dear friends of our Labour Party in Moscow, But absurdity seems to pass into delirium when we are told in the peroration :—

The horrors of the Congo and Putuniayo are being repeated in Shanghai today, but instead of the whip of a Belgian King it is the lash of starvation in the hands of men, who, etc., etc

Chinese fanaticism has nothing to do with the case. The Bolshevists are innocent as lambs. Belgian atrocities practised under the aegis of Great Britain are the real trouble!