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Grey River Argus, 8 July 1922, Page 4

try’s finances to Labour. Well, if our national debt of £2OO per head is anything to go by, the change would be certainly one for the better. It could not possibly be one for the worse. “The workers are getting too big for their boots,” is the sort of idea which the “Star” would like to propagate. It has a well of crocodile tears for the unionists who pay their delegates’ expenses for attending union conferences, but none for them when they are cut in their wages in order to give the employer bigger profits. Its concern for Labour ’s financial acumen is admittedly pertinent, in view of the growing strength of the Labour Party, and the coming of the day when Labour will attain to the Treasury benches. Any advice it may have to give prospective Labour Ministers will be welcomed and valued at whatever it may be worth, if anything. But the workers’ organisations will hardly be likely to go to the “Star” for guidance in conducting their union affairs, when they know how much at heart it keeps their class interests, and how anxious it is to fit Labour to win the favour of the “bulk of the electors, whatever their polities!” If it is necessary to regale the said “bjilk’’ of the electors with union balance sheets as a criterion of the Labour Party’s political capacity, it would be a fair thing to ask the

“Star” for details as to how the Reform and Liberal Parties use their respective party funds, and.how great a proportion of these are spent on philanthropic objects, and how very little on buying votes or papers or unscrupulous propagandists! The Welfare League itself has not published its own ballance sheet for which it was asked by the Leader of the Labour Party yet! We know enough of it to predict that it never will, either. A Labour Federation Conference is really a miniature Industrial Parliament—the model of the Parliaments of the future. [Unionists, in seeking fair conditions for themselves, do not believe in stultifying themselves by exploiting their delegates or officials. Labour’s critics, on the other hand, choose the fodder level as "heir ideal status for all wage earners. Anything like a labour organisation, that questions an | opposes their right to impose such a status, the employers will light by any means in their power, and one such means they use is aspersions on union finance. Even if there were anything to hide—and it. is not suggested anything is hidden—whose business is it? The profiteer’s or the workers? An industrial organisation is not a machine for making profits. It is not designed to relieve the state of its financial obligations to sick or injured workers, any more than to pile up largo reserves. No doubt, if they did accumulate large sums, we doubtless should .be told they were meant to cause sedition, or Bolshevism, or something;

or else to finance an industrial upheaval! It certainly is time that the One Big Union were in a position to establish a fighting* fund of about ten millions sterling in this Dominion. That is a work ahead. The “Star’s” remarks, we trust will at least serve to drive the point home. Certainly it is one that is already appreciated, and our cont-emparary may see its remarks bearing good fruit in that respect, even if it» finds the taste hardly to its liking when the fruit does ripen.