RUSSIA—AND THE STANDARD OR LIVING.

Hawera Star, Volume LI, 20 June 1931, Page 4

RUSSIA—AND THE STANDARD OR LIVING.

We have before expressed our inability' to comprehend the werking of the minds of those Labour supporters who praise Russia and all things Russian and y r et cry aloud against any' threat of a reduction in the standard of living in Australia or New Zealand. Labour leaders in this country have not been averse to declaring publicly their admiration of much of the Bolshevik doctrine, and some of them have even gone so far as to cable condolences to Moscow in the name of New Zealand Labour, on an appropriate occasion. But so far our Labour politicians have been strangely silent in attacking, in tho interests of British working men everywhere in the Empire, a policy which permits dumping of Russian goods. It is admittedly difficult for our Socialist admirers to be consistent in their attitude towards that country, for Russia under the Soviet is strangely inconsistent herself—at least on the surface, though underneath there is a steady' driving force aiming at one objective. Russia poses as the friend of. the working man everywhere, yet she does not hesitate to bring unemployment and misery' upon the working classes of other countries by medium of her dumping programme. We have ( been chided in out own columns by correspondents for referring to the unfairness of a Russian competition which is based upon sweated labour —and slave labour—but it is interesting to find that some idea of the danger of permitting the easy entry' of goods from that country' is percolating into the consciousness of some people even in New South Wales. A cable from Sydney this week ; stated that “a storm of protest has 1 arisen in regard to the arrival of a huge shipment of timber from a Rusisan port” and that “the Timber Merchants’ Association has appealed to the Government to arrest the dumping of Soviet, slave-produced timber on the I ground that the locally-milled timber is unable to compete with it.” But so far, neither in Australia nor in Now Zealand, have we heard of anybody in the trade union movement or in the Labour Party', demanding the discouragement. of Russian imports on the ground that Russian trade, which has enslaved hundreds of thousands of human lives in its own country, is, also threatening the well-being of our own workers. It is a point upon which the public would like| to hear some of the most eloquent of j our Labour politicians. |