LABOUR LEGISLATION.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CVI, Issue 12571, 5 August 1901, Page 4

LABOUR LEGISLATION.

Tee President of the Dunedin Chambeff of Commerce is evidently a sturdy charm-. pion of the bad old times. Spending his days in a constant struggle against public opinion, he asks, with supreme disregard for' logic, " whether public opinion is riot a more efficient curative than legislation, which*may possibly create far. greater and more intolerable evils than the abuses "intended to overcome." Public opinion rarely remedies abuses until it is stirred .up, and when once- roused it generally findsi expression an legislation of the kind so obnoxious to Mr Theomin. This has been the case with all our labour legislation, and; it-ife a little tirin-g to have to a*k Mr Theomia and.-his friends so often, whether they would really prefer to return to the'industrial conditions ruling in New Zealand'prior to 1891. We 'do not share Mr ..TheomihV' objection to "Socialistic re-, ■formers," and we have generally found that measures "gleefully welcomed" by thesei leaders' of political thought have been equally acceptable to the community in general, and have frequently proved of no mean service to capitalists. The whole object of all legislation, industrial and social, is in some measure to over-ride the laws of supply and demand and those other economic principles that governed the life of primitive man, and in New Zealand, more perhaps than *in any other country under, the sun, it should be unnecessary to ask whether legislation can make fruitful the barren,places of the earth. Cheviot is closer to Christchurch than to Dunedin, but its fame has surely reached 1 the southern city. Mr Theomin evidently does not share Judge Backhouse's opinion that the Conciliation, and Arbitration Act has really benefited the employer by introducing an element of certainty into industry, but the New South Wales Commissioner had the disadvantage, in -the- Dunedin critic's'' eyes, of being an unprejudiced observer. The weight of evidence ; of employers and workers alike is. all against Mr Theomin, for we have repeatedly been assured in the Court of Arbitration itself, that the relations between masters and men have, never been more cordial. The most serious discord at present existing in industry in* New Zealand is that produced by. ill-considered remarks like those addressed to the Dunedin Chamber of Commerce.* .