Grey River Argus THURSDAY, October 14th., 1926. PROGRESS v. PARTIZANS.

Grey River Argus, 14 October 1926, Page 4

Grey River Argus THURSDAY, October 14th., 1926. PROGRESS v. PARTIZANS.

It is evident that district prosperity is a very narrow conception in spine quarters, judging by our evening contemporary, whichwhile pretending to welcome anything tending that way, yesterday alluded to the progress league movement with the faint praise calculated to damn any project in the public mind. To the actual meeting where the project was discussed and endorsed, it gives a small paragraph, but to a criticism it devotes an editorial, in which it insinuates the League promoters do not live up to their advocacy of publicity. They could not be more obviously misrepresented, however, than by having the report of the meeting, occupying a column ®f our space, limited to a small paragraph by our contemporary, which evidently gives its readers adverse views of its own rather than those of the promoters as the data for forming their opinion on the matter. It is plain that the “Star’s” only use for such a venture is to divert its energy from the object in view, and to use it as a channel merely for transfusing initiative and enterprise into the somnolent Chamber of Commerce. As a matter of fact, there is no question; except ■with the. “Star,” of hostility to the Chamber, which itself alone has suggested its own days are numbered if a league is established. There is no call for any antipathy. To show where there is need for a league may incidentally show up the Chamber, but that is not the object. The “Star” suggests we hail the project as if it were the first attempt to work for the district’s prosperity, but as a. matter of fact we hail it as the latest attempt. As the “Star” says: “Greymouth’s history is full of such endeavours, and unless profit is now extracted from past experience, similar failure will be the result of any new task to develop Greymouth on the best lines.” That is the point exactly. The endeavours of the past have had a “similar failure.” That is the lesson. The cause has been narrowness and factionism. Yet our contemporary itself has learned little or nothing. It objects to the very idea of the new movement being wide enough to embrace the most numerous section of th community, namely, the wage earners. Our suggestion that the League, as the organ of a. town depending mostly on the circulation of wages, should include in its objects the conservation of working class interests as well as others, prompts the “Star” to a very cheap jibe, which even as humour is too 1 elephantine, and as criticism too •

narrow-minded and jpeurile to offer as light and leading- in such a matter. It asks: “Is the Progress League to be used as a tool by the Communistic West Coast Miners’ Council, or the Westland Timber Workers’ Union?” It forgets that both our sawmillers and our coal owners have been very anxious to enlist the support of the miners and timber workers in opposing the policy of wholesale importations. It is unaware, evidently that wage-earners are usefully enlisted by the Buller Progress League. If the workers in the industries mentioned were out of the way, there would be mighty little left here to warrant or sustain a Chamber of Commerce or any other such organisation. Such a carping attitude, and such a petty attempt to drag in a red herring comes ill from a quarter that has lectured others against divisions. Wc are asked what we meant by suggesting the district’s welfare includes the workers’ welfare. Well, we reply that whatever ignores the one ignores the other. Business people in general realise that they depend far more upon the workers than upon anybody else, even if some few .others refuse to acknowledge the fact, or attempt io conceal it. It is no* l-lie League supporters so much as their critics who, in our contemporary’s words, “require more thought and move information” as to what constitutes “the real progress of district industries," (“before being committed to whal , may prove to be against the real progress of district industries.” To suggest that, because the new enterprise has unjustly been alleged to be against the Chamber of Commerce, it may therefore be against district progress, is not inly to confuse the Chamber with progress, but Io confuse progress itself with all the “similar fail uies” which our contemporary attributes to such “endeavours” a« those wherewith it declares “Greymouth’s history is full.” Anvway whose has the fault been hitherto? Certainly not that of tm organisation only yet in th? making, but possibly of one long since tried and finally found wanting.