Greymouth Evening Star. AND BRUNNERTON ADVOCATE. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 1931. MR. FORBES’ HONESTY.

Greymouth Evening Star, 18 November 1931, Page 4

Greymouth Evening Star. AND BRUNNERTON ADVOCATE. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 1931. MR. FORBES’ HONESTY.

J7LECTORS, whatever their poli- < tical opinions, must be impressed by the improvement, recently, in the national outlook. If a policy has to be judged by its fruits, the Coalition Government already stands jifstified. Even the railways are showing a profit, unemployment is decreasing, and none of the social horrors predicted by the Labourites when .national economies were enforced, has yet occurred. , In the Homeland there has been a similar urge to greater prosperity, since the Labourites were ejected from power. No fair-minded New Zealander should assert that these happier developments in his own country and the Homeland, are mehe coincidences. He, and she, must regard it as cause and effect. Not that the financial crisis is yet ended, and that there will'be no further need for economies. Mr. Holland promises to do wonderful things if Labour is given office, but his own policy would be one important obstacle to the fulfilment of the hopes of those beguiled by Labour’s fair words. Mr. Forbes is the more honest. He makes no pretence of being able to remove national difficulties by Parliament passing a bill or two, but tells the country that only the first steps to ' recovery have been taken, and that time must elapse before the burden of extra taxation* or the hardships of retrenchment, can be got rid off This honesty has a defect from, the viewpoint of electionstrategy as it gives the Labour speakers opportunity for less scrupulous methods, by which they deceive the unthinking. The Labourites screech about further wage-cuts, dismissals, abolition of the Arbitration Act, etc., greatly misrepresenting the intentions of the Coalition Government. In connection with the industrial arbitration system, Mr. Forbes, yesterday, gave a definite denial to

the Labour seare-tnongering that! the Government desires to abolish the Arbitration Court. That there is room for amendment in the working of the system, however, is not disputed, and it is not surprising that in their disgust with some of the happenings, angry critics say more than they really mean. Mt. Polson, president of the New Zealand Farmers’ Union, discussing the Arbitration Act, last week, quoted several instances of the absurdities resulting from the working of awards. He related how butchers killing bobby calves had been getting £6 a day while the farmers were getting only a few shillings for the calves; how in unloading coal at Miramar one and ahalf hours was lost by the watersiders in travelling between the main wharves (where their labour was called for) and Miramar, even though some of them lived at Miramar, but they offered to work eight hours a day if they were paid for 9| hours; of the shrewdness of the waterside authorities at Wanganui in getting lightering declared a ‘ ‘ dangerous occupation, ’ ’ thereby enabling the watersiders to receive 9/4 an hour for every minute Of the time they left the ma,in wharves in a luxurious car for Castlecliff till they got back again, and of the two shifts a day at Wairoa, where men earned 18/4 an hour. These instances are not exceptional, as in every trade in every centre similar examples of the need for more commonsense can be found. None will gain more from the proposed reforms than the workers. “The too easy ’ ’ money above is not really in the workers’ permanent interests, and does not encourage the growth of industry, the only method of lessening unemployment.