ESTABLISHED 1875. Manawatu Daily Times. The Oldest Manawatu Journal. Conducted by E. D. HOBEN. Published Every Morning. TUESDAY, MARCH 15, 1910. LABOUR POINTS.

Manawatu Times, Volume LXV, Issue 964, 16 March 1910, Page 4

ESTABLISHED 1875. Manawatu Daily Times. The Oldest Manawatu Journal. Conducted by E. D. HOBEN. Published Every Morning. TUESDAY, MARCH 15, 1910. LABOUR POINTS.

Our cables of yesterday included two extremely interesting itoms in connection with Labour matters, both breaking important gronud. One oatne all the way from Chicago, and told how 30,000 firemen on 49 Westem railways have demanded the right of regulating an prerequisite of arbi trafcion-on the- wages question. In spirit, this olaim is Hot absolutely new, beoause the levelling process whioh has been the ideal of some of the Unions in Australasia has already had the eft'eot of more or less "regulating" promotions by tying good men to the standards of tliPir lea competent brethern. The Union organisers have certainly checked promotions in many concerns by taking a false view as to what are the legitimate functions* of Unionism, and after all, many of the "classification" sohem'es are,more or less attempts to "regulate" promotions by a sort of rule of thumb that is the triumph of mediocrity, even though it k probably designed as a barrier against favouritism. This muoh' granted, there is certainly something new in the insistence that iirgreat concerns the question of promotions should be' taken from the hands of the employer ami pat into the hands of the employed. That .is a position which no employer could possibly tolerate. In the United States particularly, some of the cleverest. railway, managers have risen from.tho footplate,.and it would be men like these who would find their upward progress blocked by any scheme whioh, while profess,ing to secure equality of opportunity, really removed opportunity for exceptional individual advancement.

THE "NON-UNION UNIONIST,

The other point deals with a paradox. Judge Heydon. of the New South Wales Industrial-..Court,'- has granted representation to a "Union oil Free Labourers" on tlie Wages Board, which must' be aB remarkable a beast: as Australia's ovun famous platypus—the "ornithoryncus paradoxus" of soionce.. Jec the position -, of these nou-Union Unionists, and the Judge's reasoning concerning them, is quite logical. So long as a strike lasts aud men take the risk of ostracism among ni6n of their own oalliug, and of aotnal physical illusage, to do the work laid down by the strikers, they are hailed by employers as deliverers, but directly the strike is settled on the basis of the former employees returning to work, these men are tamed out to faoe the new situafciou with the cortainty that they will be-branded "blaok-legs,'' and will have suoh influence as the late strikers can exert against them. It has happened over and over again, aud never more markedly than in the Sydney-New-castle mine aud wharf troubles. If the employers showed the consideration they profess for tlie 1 men who risk unpopularity to help them, they would let'no other reason but absolute misconduct stand between these "strike breakers" and permanent employment, and failing that, would pension or compensate those who have to go. Only in that way could they counteract in, practice the "preference," whioh they profess to fight in theory. Instead; as Judge Heydon pointed out, they'have no dispensing with the "freo labourer" purely because ; [ lie ifa a "free labourer," aud ipso, - facto anti-pathetic to the Unionist < that lie used to' checkmate, whereas ] ifa Unionist were discharged be- ; cause he was a Unionist the law f would step in and mulct the em- i ployer. It will be interesting to note ' what may bo tlie ultimate result of j the situation Judge Heydon has , oreated, and whioh praotically \ amounts to the creation of a rival ' Union in the same trade, a sitaatiou v so far held to be contrary to the J arbitration law.