EXIT THE WATSON GOVERNMENT. Wrecked on Preference to Unionists.

Free Lance, Volume V, Issue 216, 20 August 1904, Page 6

EXIT THE WATSON GOVERNMENT. Wrecked on Preference to Unionists.

THE Watson Fedeial Government might have been still pursuing the even tenoi of its useful way if it hadn t tued to level down the working man to a minimum usefulness, instead of levelling him up to the highest efficiency Some day, when the Australian nation gets too tired to worry about earning a ciust by the exercise of the best skill to be found within its gates, and concedes that the very worst possible worker is woith as much in cash as the very best one, then a Government standing on a "pieference to unionists ' platform may succeed in ruling the Commonwealth for an indefinite time. Granted that Chi is Watson is a stiaight-goer, a shrewd, clean, hardhitting working man, a "grafter " That being so, the Watson following should not have consistently stuck to the idea that the best way for a country to be run is to reduce all workers to a dead level of mediocrity, and give power to the Arbitration Couits to prohibit a hardwoiking non-unionist from earning a living, while insisting on work being given to a unionist who might be the veriest waster The possession of a union ticket isn't a guarantee that its holder possesses the

highest skill, and the fact that a man is what the Australians call a "scab" doesn't prove that he isn't fit to earn the biggest wages in the land * * ♦ The Watson preference-to-union-ist<3 idea would make it possible for the judge of an Arbitration Court to give "the sack to a non-unionist who had been in a life billet, and substitute for him anyone who bore the union trade-mark Also, 10 penalise the employer who dared to keep m his employ a non-unionist servant, however skilful and worthy. And many people and trade societies in New Zealand have the same craze, and want a preference to unionists clause m the New Zealand Conciliation and Arbitration Act * * * Mechanical skill, owing to the aibifcrary rules governing the employment of apprentices, and the inability of employers to teach more than a small number of boys a trade at one time, is not now of a high ord<3r. In fact, the merest tyro has but to look round to see numerous evidences m New Zealand generally of the worst possible workmanship To say to the best workman "You have only to be a unionist, and you may reduce your output to the output of the worst workman who 's also a unionist," isn't the kind of thing New Zealand or Australia wants in countries that have to fight upwards and meet the combination and competition of countries whose laws foster skill, and whose employers pay the best workmen the best wages, the worst workmen being spurred to greater efforts by hopes of future expertness and better pay