THE LABOUR WORLD.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1247, 23 January 1896, Page 19

THE LABOUR WORLD.

LABOUR NOTES. (From Our Special Correspondent .) London, December 6. The. situation in the shipbuilding dispute to-dav gives but scant hope of an early settlement; And yet the news ffom abroad, which has Come to hand this week, must have made both masters and men fully aware of the gigantic madness of allowing the trouble to continue another day. If it continues a few weeks longer thp British shipbuilding industry will most likely receive a blow from which it will never properly recover. We have heard already tint the new vessels with which Japan is about to strengthen her nav}? are not, on account of the trouble, all to be put out to contract with British shipbuilders, as was originally intended, bnt that several of them will be arranged for in Germany and elsewhere. And now come tidings to the effect that the Government of Pekin has determined to buy a new navy in place of the one “chawed up' by Japan in the late war, and has commissioned Captain Nlaclure to place the orders forthwith. Under the old state of things this new navy would have naturally been built in England, but the Chinese Government will certainly hesitate to place all its orders here if the men in our yards are going to strike whenever they think business is improving. At the present time, certainly, the Pekin Government would be a.nply justified in placing their work with foreign shipbuilders, even if at a slightly increased cost, for they would be certain of getting the work done within the specified contract time. Our German cousins, the Times correspondent at Berlin tells us, are taking an extraordinary interest in the British shipbuilding industry, and with a view to taking advantage of the Belfast strike and the Clyde lock out, are urging their Government to enact that none but home-made materials stall be used in future naval contracts. A movement is also on foot to procure the lowering of railway freights for all shipbuilding materials used in German yards, there is no concealment as to the object aimed at by these demands. British suppliers of iron and steel are to be barred from Germany by the reduction in the price of similar articles produced at home. As soon as the existing margin ’twixt the price of British and German steel and iron has disappeared—and it is but a narrow one even now Germauy will be able to build ships as cheaply as England, or ci en cut under our prices, for the German workmen are content at present to work longer hours for smaller pay than their English brethren. They may not always care to do so, in fact, it is liberal odds on the wage rate rising in Germany during the next few years, and the hours of labour being shortened. But the German workman is too wide awake to create trouble just at present, and knows well that by helping his employer to boat the British manufacturer and trader he is must surely promoting his own welfare. The British workman, on the contrary, is ever fighting for his own hand, and never seems able to grasp the fact that foreign competition is a potent factor in determining the of his labour. lie canuot, or will not, see that the fact of flans Schmidt, of Stettin, being able Jo bqild a 2000-ton boat at £5 a ton, by reason of cheap labour, has anything in it to justify John Brown, shipbuilder, of London, refusing his workmen a rise of 2s a week. He looks upon the talk about German competition in manufactures as so much “ bogey ” put about by employers for the purpose of keeping workmen’s wages down, and his union bosses encourage him in this idea. But the British manufacturer know's to his sorrow that German competition is not a thing to sneer at, and some day the truth will dawn upon employees also. Meanwhile we shall have strikes and other difficulties cropping up in every industry, and when the foreigner has secured the biggest half of the commercial loaf, the hungry British workman will wonder why he didn’t ‘-brown” to the truth a little sooner. And I shall say to him “ Because you let others think for you.”

SHIRKERS, NOT WORKERS. There are two great classes of unemployed in the Old Country. Those who cannot find work, and those who won't work. These may be again subdivided into a variety of sects, but that is unnecessary for the purpose of this paragraph. Suffice it to say that the confirmed idlers outnumber the deserving unemployed, and that it is the former who are at once the despair of the philanthropist and the bugbear of the Guardians. At Sheffield a determined effort is oeiug made to stamp out the class, and some typical specimens were sharply dealt with by the Bench the other clay. The evidence showed that it was the standing custom of these shirkers to pop in and out of the workhouse on the pretence of being unable to earn a living. One had been there nine times, and another seventeen times in a. very short period. But when they were in the “ house ” they haggled at performing the tasks required of them in return for board and lodging. They were sturdy,'able-bodied men, but refused to pick oakum on the ground that such toil was too arduous for their physical strength. And other descriptions ot' work were found to be equally objectionable by these fastidious creatures. One of them was given a job of weeding by a softhearted farmer, but the poor fellow soon knocked off and returned to the workhouse on the pretext that he had “too far to walk. 5 ' The Bench decided that a month’s hard labour in prison would be beneficial to the men. I doubt it. A taste of the “cat” would have been more likely to reform such wastrels, but unhappily the public is just as much afraid of scoring such rascals’ tender backs as 'they arc of soiling their own hands.