AGITATORS.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 8 April 1925, Page 7

AGITATORS.

(To The Editor.) Sir,- —Your report of tlie monthly meeting of the farmers’ Union executive informs us that Mr. E. J. Betts delivered himself of a few vague remarks uptm the question of “Labour hold-ups.” “The men on the land.” lie said, “were ‘fed up’ with the action ol these men." Whom exactly Mr. Betts referred to by the term “these men” is, of course, uncertain, but that he referred to some section of organised Labour can he inferred from the genera.! .tenor of the discussion. Now. seeing that the only important industrial hold-up in Taranaki of recent months was one for which the shipping companies were responsible, why did not the Farmers’ Union speakers include them in their denunciations ? I rcler. of course, to the recent hold-no on the wharves at New Plymouth, which was definitely a lock-out by some of the shipping companies and not a strike by the men. According to the report.

“Mr. Hodge advocates short shrift for the agitators.” This was surely a strange attitude to be adopted by one who was himself attending a union meeting and taking part in an “agitation.” What agitator is it that Mr. Hodge would give short shrift to? Is it the Labour agitator only that meets with his disapproval, or would lie deal out the same treatment to agitators of all kinds? Would lie, for instance, consider the following gentlemen as “agitators” and so entitled to “short shrift” —Mr. Poison, President of the Farmers’ Union, who has been a strenuous “agitator” for agricultural banks and other reforms: Mr. Grounds, who “agitates” for new methods of marketing produce; M r Hebenton, who “agitates” for Reform: Mr. Howard Elliott, who “agitates” for Protestant principles; Mr. John Dawson, who “agitates” for Prohibition; Mr. R. A. Armstrong, who “agitates” in the interest of the moderate drinker; Mr. B. Hammond of the Employers’ Federation, who “agitates” for the employers? Or would Mr, Hodge reserve the term “agitator” for such as Mr. Holland, who agitates for new political principles, which are rapidly gaining the support, of enlightened electors in all parts of the world, pr Mr. James Roberts, of the Alliance of Labour, who “agitates” for some thorough organisation of the workers in the industrial. field? Surely, if it is wrong to be an “agitator,” Mr. Hodge must feel distressed at the activities of the former individuals equally with those of the latter, and must even fee] some qualms of conscience about his own position in the Farmers’ Union. Surely he must acknowledge that the “wharf lumper” has the same right to organise as the dairy producer, and the same right to “control” the sale of his labour power as the dairy farmer has to “control” the sale of his product. Surely 3J>. Hodge cannot question the value of organisation for either end. And if he knows anything of the hisiory of social progress he must know that all the great advances of past generations have been nothing blit the realisation of reforms first formulated by a few far-seeing individuals, who, in tlieir day and generation, were denounced as “agitators” and “extremists” by the very people for whose emancipation they toiled. It is, regrettable to find prominent members of a Farmers’ Union taking such a one-sided attitude on the question of Labour disputes. When one sees men active in such an organisation as the Farmers’ Union one would like to think that under different circumstances, had the same individuals been obliged to earn their livelihood in one of those callings where trade unionism is the order of the day. they would be found as active members of trade unions, and not as docile and timid worshippers" of things as they arc.- —I am etc., PRO-UNIONIST.