LABOR NOTES.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 3711, 21 December 1912, Page 4

LABOR NOTES.

(Conducted by the Dominion Executive Council of the United Labor Party, which alone is responsible for the views expressed in the column.)

BUT YOU CAN’T AFFORD IT, At every point when the proposal is made to make a private monopoly a public enterprise the complaint is made that the public cannot afford the money. It will cost so much to establish a public enterprise that it cannot be undertaken. The answer is that it costs more not to do it than it can possibly cost to do it. In mnnv cities in Great Britain and on the Continent co-operative and municipal bakeries have been established In every instance there has resulted better bread, lower prices, more sanitary conditions, better conditions for the labor employed, and in no case has.there been a loss to the community on its investment. Doing it has always proven to be cheaper than not doing it.

Take Wellington. It is estimated that an up-to-date bakery, sufficient to supp'v the whole community with sav 1 5*000 loaves daily, would cost £40,000 to completely equip for the making and the distribution of the bread. If the £40,000 were to be carried as a permanent loan at 5 per cent the annual cost would be £2OOO. But the bread could lie nroduced and delivered in oiled naper, with never human hands touching it or the foulness pi the street reaching it from the time it left the ovens till it reached the diningrooms of the people, and the bread could be produced and delivered and interest charges paid at 2d per loaf. The current price is did. that would be a nett saving of 11/1 per ioal. 'there would bo a business of 10,000 loaves daily. This would mean a nett saving for*the year of £33,645 to the people in their bread account. Yes, but this would mean a loan or £4O 000. This ritv cannbt afford to make the loan. It is better to borrow £40.000 once than to lose-£33,640 annually, and then have all the filth ox the street and aH the danger of infection carried with the bread to eteiy home. But if the citv cannot use its credit to borrow £40*,000 it can do what mio-lit be a better thing—it can sell bread certificates at a reduced price, collect the payments in advance, and finance the bakery without borrowing of a single shilling, coulo pay for the bakery with the bread produced in the bakery by snreading the cost of the plant to the price of the bread, say, extending over a period ol five rears. All that won d he necessary to do this would lie simply for the City Council to become n. business bopy devoted to actually doing the business of the people instead of doing nothing, while wasteful methods of production and dangerous methods of distribution in enterprises out of date render the poorer service for the higher price. FRATERNAL DELEGATES.

Hereafter the British Trades Union Congress will send a fraternal delegate to the annual Labor Congress in Canada. The man chosen to he the first delegate is Will Thorn. Hasten the dav when such delegates will he sent to all English-speaking nations. The interchange of de’egates has been made between the I nited States and Great Britain for eighteen years, and the annual visit to the United States of those who represent the British trade unionists has come to be an event looked forward to year by year, and is always of very great imnortaneo to the American lnotement. Lecture tours are arranged, receptions given, and the best which England has to say is said to the cousins in Yankeeland. Recent visits to the United States from Germany have been keenly appreciated in the same way. For the first time in American history a ropre T sentative of the trades unionists of a foreign country was shown the courtesy of being invited to speak to the House of Representatives of the American Congress. It was on the occasion of the visit of the vice-president of the central organisation of the German trades unions less than a year ago that this occurred. The British and Continental trades unionists are constantly “changing works,” and with every such visit the soliditray of the workers of the world is greatly promoted, the strength of the movement greatly increased, the danger of international war greatly lessened, and the coining of industrial justice hastened not for one trade or for one nation, hut for all workers in all lands. The United Labor Party depends entirely upon an appeal to the intelligence, to the public spirit, and to the ‘public interest in the proposals it offers. The only way the United Labor Party could he driven out of New Zea-land-would he for the great body of the people of New Zealand to abandon their own intelligence and repudiate their own judgment and betray their own interests. It will be a day or two yet before that programme will be adopted. While Iveir Hardie was touring America in the interests of the Socialist propaganda, a woman in his own country died and wil’ed hint 19,000 dollars in trust, to be expended in furthering the labor organisation and education in Great Britain. The United Labor Party is the only one which demands even-handed justice, no matter who is the offender. The only reason why anybody would over want to own anything would he in order to use it. What a man can use alone—that is the way to own it. If it must lie used collectively—that would bo the better way to own it. STRIKES FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES.

“Let me te'l him that there never has been a strike lost to the militant section of the workers. If we have ever been beaten on tlie spot by the masters and ‘scabs’ it has only helped to educate the working classes throughout the world to the principles of industrial solidarity.”—J. Macdonald.

The effort to deal with industrial disputes by conciliation and .arbitration through legally constituted machinery created for the purnose lias had a trial of less than twenty years. It is admitted by all the friends of arbitration that the inevitable shortcomings of a new undertaking have had their full share in the effort to substitute the regular forms of arbitration proceedings for the irregularities of industrial revolt. “The militant section of the workers” have had one hundred thousand years during which timo there was no other programme within the reach of the workers in any effort to remedy their grievances than that of industrial revolt, and here comes a gentleman to declare that, in all this time not one such strike lias yet been lost, that the temporal’/ advantaged of

every seeming defeat lias only hastened tiie final solidarity. LISTEN TO SIR ROBERT STOUT. BUSINESS CONTRACTS. " it is not often possible to get a Supreme Court decision with regard t-o a detail in political party management, but the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court recently gave a very emphaticexpression to a thought covering one of the most important matters in connection with the work of the United Labor Party.

He is reported to have said: “I do not know what business men in New Zealand are coming to. They are not ignorant men who cannot write. I cannot, understand them coming to agreements and not putting them in writing. If both parties had their deserts they would be find for putting a contract in such a form and taking up the time of the court in this way. Are you children carrying on commercial business. These were very severe words for the Chief Justice to address to the commercial men of New Zealand, but if simple ordinary business transactions are not to be carried on under verbal agreements, with nothing in. writing, what would the Chief Justice have to say if a political party organised to transact certain business and to see that certain business transacted in a certain way, should employ agents to do this business, give them no written acceptance and attempt to proceed to transact business involving many millions of pounds in money, the safety and the integrity, ancl the good character of the nation to a degree that no other kind of business does—what would the Chief Justice have to say of a political party which would attempt to transact its’ business with no written agreement between itself and its authorised agents and spokesmen.

It is quite true that the business men are not failing to put their agreements in writing because they are not ignorant. It is just possible they may have some traditions that it reflects upon a man’s honor to ask him to promise in writing what ho is willing to swear—what he is ready to do if lie will only lie permitted to do it without promising in writing that this is what fie is going to do. The Chief Justice seems to have an idea th at the failure to put in writing business agreements is a serious reflection upon the honor of the commercial men of the country. It is absolutely certain that those who have most regard for their personal honor are sure to hesitate to agree to do anything without knowing definitely what is to be agreed to and then when the agreements are made the more conscientious and the more honorable the man, the more ho would be sure to insist that the agreement should lie put into writing, that all parties in terested may be able to remember the agreements and all of them be able to remember tlun all in the same way. If this is true between a commercial house and a travelling salesman, between partners in business, between builders and contractors—if the terms of an arbitration court award are to be definitely written and definitely agreed to, either by the voluntary action of the parties concerned, or under the order of the court, certainly then the business representatives of the people or candidates for office to whom is to lie publicly given the authority to rewrite arbitration Acts, determine the letter of commercial law, fix the forms of authorised business transactions, manage great publicspirited enterprises and undertakings, ought also to sign their contracts. If the Chief Justice would fine a business man for not putting his contracts in writing, what would he do with a candidate for office, or with the people who vote for him who clamor for the opportunity to transact business but make it a point of honor not to put then- agreements into writing?