THE FREEZING INDUSTRY.

Evening Star, Issue 19407, 16 November 1926, Page 6

THE FREEZING INDUSTRY.

No spectacle, according to a medical authority, is so edifying, as a revelation of the weakest side of human nature, as that of a man who does not know he is slightly ill. His one object is to p rove _to himself and the world at large—-that his unpleasant feelings are the natural consequence of tho troubles which beset him. He is, in fact, looking for trouble with tho assiduousness of a bacteriologist looking for gems, and he does not look in vain. All with whom ho conics in contact aro people without human sympathy or understanding. He feels righteously isolated in a world of selfishness. These appear to bo the symptoms shown by the New Zealand Alliance of Labor, at present seeking to communicate its discontent to the ' freezing workers of Hawke’s Bay. It professes to have found the Arbitration Court lacking in human sympathy and understanding, although tho court has given employees in this industry special consideration in view of its being a seasonal occupation, Tho sheep owners also are devoid of human understanding because they declined to meet tho employees in conference over the wage increases asked. Killing is going on at tho works, because lamb is a commodity which declines to wait on the whims of industrial organisations. By tho time these have been satisfied it may have grown into mutton, therefore those who fattened it are themselves seeing to the killing of their own property. In the curious phraseology of the Alliance of Labor this constitutes “ blackleg ” labor, and now tho Alliance threatens a boycott of tho meat at the consumers’ end unless tho meat works proprietaries como to terms. It would he interesting to know by whom tho resolution embodying this decision was drafted and how many freezing workers were at the meeting at Hastings on Sunday which carried it. The way in which tho Alliance is behaving in tho matter indicates that it is out of sorts, though doubtless its officials, after the fashion of people in that state of health, would almost certainly repudiate that its peevishness is due to any such cause.