NOTES AND COMMENTS ON LABOUR QUESTIONS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVII, Issue 14303, 24 February 1910, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS ON LABOUR QUESTIONS.

BY I ARTISAN.

The ' New Zealand ' Federation of Labour lias :- forwarded V to* the New South Wales coal miners £1200, to be used for the bonefit of the strikers. Outside unions have contributed a little over £200, • making a total of over £1400 from New Zealand unions*.' ,

' Recently a' resolution - was introduced . into the' Auckland Trades Council which, had it been carried, would have dobarred anyone who is the paid secretary of a union from being appointed as a delegate to that body to represent his union. The motion was, after considerable discussion, negatived. „

'Mr. R. Manning is approaching the City Council, on behalf of the local Fishermen s Union, to provide tho necessary buildings find water supply to enable the fishermen to land their produce in a clean -and marketable condition. The Harbour Board litis signified its willingness to provide a- site, conditionally on the Council erecting and maintaining tho buildings. The union consider that, if the present application is granted, it will be tho first step towards obtaining a municipal fish market. .

The following remits for consideration at the annual conference next Easter have been passed by the Auckland Trades Council: — 1. That rule 2 of the constitution of the New Zealand Federation of Labour be struck out, and the following be .substituted — " That the object shall be the socialisation of the means -of production, distribution,and exchange." 2. That the conference support Mr. Courtney in tho adoption of a union badge, as a means of enforcing preference to unionists. 3. That the Defence Bill be .amended in terms of Air. T. K. Taylor's recent motion to the effect, "That a citizen soldier should always ; have the right of appeal to the Civil Court, thereby maintaining the principle of the citizen before the soldier." 4. That the milk supply bo nationalised. 5. That the conference devise means to bring labour closer together to heal the breaches which undoubtedly exist. Former remits reaffirmed: That the Plumbers' Registration Bill be adopted; that the conference recommends the establishment of State coal mines and depot in the North' Island.

Replying to the * official welcome homo extended to Mr. Ramsay Mac Donald by his constituents recently, ; the. Labour member for Leicester declared that the industrial system was beginning, in India, : ju.vt as it began in England a century or more ago. If they went into the beautiful suburbs of Bombay, amidst the palm trees, and all the circumstances of Oriental scenery, they found the air darkened by smoky chimneys. If they went about the industrial quarters of .Bombay, a new: form of overcrowding was found, caused by bringing men and women from all parts of India, from Gulistan and Cashmere, in the north, right away down to Madras and Ceylon, in the south,' to work in the' cotton factories. - There they found the same sort of thing as. existed in jirigland— same up-to-date machinery beint? worked by 1 men, women, and little children, of six. seven, eight, arid nine years of age. (" Shame.") In India they were -going to have "-a wage-earning« class, divorced from? the soil, V andthe; past history of the country, thrust into and kept in the townsthe beginning iof .a proletariat, , with precisely the same ; characteristics, 1 the Same , evils, and the same problems -as we had in England. > ■ • " •

Mr. Sidney Webb, who is making a tre-' mendouft effort to have; the minority report of the "recent Poor Law Commission put into operation, spoke at Bradford in the ■course of his campaign. Dealing with un- ; employment—". gravest of : present-day problems"—Mr. : Webb said that the question must be dealt with now, not .because unemployment, in proportion to population, was worse to-day than it had been in times past, but, for two reasons: First, we had become conscious of the evil, and the unemployed had become conscious of it; and, secondly, - local government had been ;so successfully built; up that the problem was now manageable. ' It was now possible, he declared, ;to abolish - unemployment in the sense that thev had abolished typhue—except > for sporadic cases;; and. it was his deliberate opinion that; if unemployment *'• was not prevented \in ' this 'country v it would-be because the Ministry had not made lip its mind to undertake the - task. - The - speaker ; then dealti with ' minority: report proposals for . preventing unemployment, among them the: establishment of a national authority to ideal' with; the,problem, . the effective use of labour exchanges, regularising ..the demand for, labour, ; and; dove-tailing Reasonable' trades. Denouncing relief works as wasteful and demoralising, because,' be observed-, it' was not in human nature to put forth ;your' full stroke on a job which . you knew to £■ be j artificially created, he urged that if they ', had to ) maintain a man' they should deal with him as they would a sonmaintain him until they could find him a situation. ;As to the cost of carrying out the minority 1 proposals, he had high authority for ' saving ; it could -be done at the price -of ;one Dreadnought a year. • ; 1 ■■ - • - " '