MAKING POLITICAL. CAPITAL.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18708, 14 May 1924, Page 8

MAKING POLITICAL. CAPITAL.

Political opponents of the Government, as is the nature of politicians, may be expected to endeavour to make political capital out of the recent : railway strike. The Labour Party, from the outset, allied itself without reservation to the strikers and ifi hostility to the Government's refusal to concede their demands in full. The Liberal. Party, at the time, published its disapproval of strike methods, but that does not prevent it now from attacking the Government's attitude and actions. Mr. Masters is, by length of service, a junior member of the party, but by the vigour and the volume of his 1 activity has established something of . a reputation, and his speech at Stratford may be accepted as an exposition of the case which the party proposes to make against the Government. He commences by declaring that the Labour Party and the Reform Party turned the strike to political advantage; hence, only the Liberal Party preserved its virtue against the temptation to exploit the Gov-: ernment's difficulties - for its own aggrandisement. Yet on the first day of the strike, when the Labour Party proclaimed its support of the strikers, Mr. Wilford declared. that his party endorsed the claims for the 44-hours week and for an increase of wages. This was manifestly a piece of irresponsible electioneering, since after long and dispassionate consideration, the chairman of the Wages Board had confessed himself unable to adjudicate upon either question without information that is still not available to Mr. Wilford or anyone else. Hence, Mr. Masters lays his case upon a faulty foundation. He proceeds to use bad history and worse logic. There is his statement that in 1921 the same General Manager and the same Government granted the Second Division a 44-hours week. They did- not. The Government conceded the men's request for a wages board, and, whatever misgivings it may have had, accepted the findings of that board. On the last occasion. the A.S.R.S. agreed to the personnel and the order of reference of the WagesBoard, but having failed in its

| attempts to dictate to the board and to the Government, declared a strike. ' Those facts are ignored in the fabrication of the Liberal Party's criticism. Mr. . Masters proceeds, instead, to examine the merits of the men's claims. He is entitled to his opinions, but they do not interpret the Government's attitude toward the strike, because the issue in that conflict was not wages and hours, but whether claims should be decided by judicial inquiry or by violent measures. The Government has certainly said' the • - railways cannot afford to concede the claims of the A.S.R.S. but from the outset it has been willing to accept the decision of a wages board and is equally pledged to accept the report of the proposed commission. In other words, the Government has not given a decision on the men's claims, so that all Mr. Masters says about them has no application to the Government. But what does he say about the strike 1 "No self-respect-ing man could have acted otherwise than the Minister for Railways had done in rejecting the ultimatum." Not only is the Liberal case against the Government intrinsically weak, but Mr. Masters/ himself by that sentence shatters it to fragments.