INDUSTRIAL UNREST.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXV, Issue LXV, 18 December 1913, Page 5

INDUSTRIAL UNREST.

DELIVERANCE BY THE PRESBYTERIAN ASSEMBLY.

BY TETWOHAPH —PRESS ASSOCIATION.

CHRISTCHTIRCH, Dec. 17. The Presbyterian Assembly adopted, without discussion, by 70 votes to 38, a motion regarding the industrial unrest. Tlfe motion includes these paragraphs: "That in view of the widespread industrial unrest, of which the New Zealand strike is only a phase, the Assembly records its profound sympathy with all just claims of Labor, and, its conviction that -beneath, world-wide upheavals are great moral impulses and appeals, which cannot be ignored. The right to earn a fully adequate living is a right which cannot be disregarded, but the Assembly would also record its conviction that employers have rights as valid in the sight of God as those of the employed. It holds that all com-pact-breaking, whether by employers or employed, is sinful and subversive of 6Ocial welfare and progress. The Assembly profoundly deplores and condemns every attempt to subvert legitimate authority by violence." "The Assembly is persuaded that a fuller and clearer recognition, on the part of the wealthy, of the responsibilities of wealth is urgently demanded, as is also the ending of the caste system, which, with the artificial distinction it draws between class and class, between man and man, is probably in no small measure responsible for the seething un-. rest of our time."

"The Assembly, while disclaiming any right or competence to offer expert opinion as to purely economic factors in the problem of industrial unrest, deskes that an enouirv should be made as to the value of these proposals: (1) That private ownership of great public utilities tends to a monopoly inimical to the welfare of the community, and that these, therefore, should be nationalised and put under control of tbA State. The question should be facp'l whether .this could be done and still leave sufficient room for private enterprise and the development of industrial initiative. (2) That some form of voluntary co-operation and profit sharing between employers and employed is desirable and is probably the next step in tbe evolution of the ? serial organism." ■■ ■*