A TWELVE-HOUR DAY.

Mataura Ensign, 28 January 1920, Page 4

A TWELVE-HOUR DAY.

. The cables now inform us that the Bolshevik. Government, has fixed a twelve-hour day for workers, including Sunday, instead of six as formerly, This* nadotibt marks the second «i-.ige of the advance of the haughty proletariat aristocrats. The pure and lofty tenets 'of Bolshevism have a Mrong hold in Russia, but. such a sweeping reform on the part of the Red rulers is sufficient to justify a sub-proletarat rebellion. At the bottom of every liuman soul is the desire for libertv.lt is a. true arid beautiful instinct t.nd led to Russia taking up the Soviet idea with, such enthusiasm. Lenin and Trotsky pictured a State in which work would be reduced to a minimum, if not ..abolished ...altogether,, but now comes thsi reaction! The only trouble is,thatin. a. State, no matter whether monarchic, or democratic, or proletarian, the individual cannot have liberty. The only place where liberty Is possible is on a desert island.' Robinson Crus'in had it, and he himself became an e-m-Iployer and a bourgeois as soon as Friday appeared on the scene. The | proletarian Government of Russia is no' d cmocratic; it is, merelv a reversal of autocracy. The humble, have I-iop i raised «P and : the mighty cast from j their-• seats.-.. With their rise the j humble' begun to put on the air s of the former/mighty, and the st:ii •humbler will.-soon, become restive an!; rebellious."lt-matters little whether the tyrannous Governors call themselves. Kings or Premiers; or'.Proletariat, missaries. That divine-.-spirit the desire for liberty, which has passed on the torch of rebellion against nernl» ■ taskmasters from generation to gener&ti99 wiU topple th©m all into tw

dust. Twelve hours' work every day, Sunday included,.is too-much even for the most fervent protagonist for revolutionary schools of advanced political thought'!