JEW-BAITING AND LABOURBAITING.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1354, 10 February 1898, Page 35

JEW-BAITING AND LABOURBAITING.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir,— A 8 one who reads with great interest what may be termed the Empire and world-wide articles, in the New Zealand Times, the ‘State of the Nations” being the latest, I would like .to lay before your readers a somewhat different view to your own as to the actuating motives for Jew-baiting by the masses in foreign countries. Britons are more selfcontrolling, as witness the splendid endurance of'the engineers and kindred workers in their struggle against what has been termed “the relentless and resistless powor of organised capital” in its determination to smash the working-men's unions. Founded on what is termed enterprise (through getting the earliest tip as to the Battle of Waterloo), hut what is more generally known as deception, and which plain speakers character it?# fraud, the Rothschilds have attained by their financial methods to a controlling influence among the nations greater than that wielded by kings, emperors or republics. They are the masters, who make or mar, wars and peoples. These kings of finance, their anger being aroused, punished Russia for its tolerance of Jew-baiting by withholding the money it sorely needed. In association with kindred institutions and 'its kith and kin throughout the world, this controlling influence is all-powerful. "What this means in the destinies of nations has been plainly set forth by Disraeli in one of his famous novels. Russia, in its laws for the expulsion of the Jew?, was but responding to a national cry of despairfrom irs people to save them from extinction by its merciiess oppressor—namely, the .alien Jew expert interest-monger. The Jew has an instinctive abhorrence of hard labour. He will not work so long as he can successfully exploit. This was one of the greatest hindrances Baron Hirsch experienced in his earlier attempts at founding colonies for poor Jews in America. By their keener intelligence an 4 unscrupulous methods of bartering and inveigling the innocent and ignorant Russian peasantry into accepting small loans, the invading Jew soon became their masters, then their oppressors, and in exacting the uttermost interest possible brought ruin and dismay, not in mere isolated cases, but wholesale throughout the country among hitherto peaceful villagers and industrial communites, who, in their despair and wrath, turned upon and rended their despoilers. That is the simple explanation which has been given of Jew - baiting in Russia. Vanity Fair in ‘‘May, 1891, during the time intense feeling was aroused, re- i ferring to previous remarks, said:— “We admitted that it was hard that the i Jews should suffer j but we added that Russia was right to expel the foreign

Sdttler, productive of nothing save his kind —Uhd id that very prolific'—who adds fiCtbiiig to tho gbb'd of his chosen land, but does mischief — 1 social# economic and hygienic.” The 'fifties’ Correspondent Said i -- '‘The hieasUres takori by Russia are' only the natural consequences of its terror on account of the tfeiueiidorts numbers of this prolific people, Which threatened to submerge the national race.” What the kiDgs of finance—the Rothschilds—hate done aifiorig the kingly rulers of the earth, making them tribUtera to their enormous annual gains' ilf interest, till there is practically no dumping-ground among the nations and in national enterprise for its safe and profitable investment, so tho lesser fry, swarming among the Continental .nations, have exploited the poorest of the poor among the productive and industrial classes The Continental as well. as tho British and American peoples, as contra-distinguished from their law-makers and rulers, or# in the latter cisd, their apolitical bosse-,” have, through the mol-e or less educational facilities how common, added Very materially to their stodk of knowledge. They know in a general way what heavy sums are annually spent in Europe on armies and navies, and hOw in America the great captains of industry and millionaires are gradually building up a standing army in their o\Vn self-protection, officered by the wealthy and their sons and relatives. The Workers of the world are getting to know of these things, and the oigamsed workers of Continental Europe, where the-taxation for war purposes is heaviest, are getting pretty sick of the everlasting drain. They want to end this war-strife. They have had it dinged into them that the Egyptian war was but a war in the interests of bondholders# and that the bolstering up of Turkey i 3 not for the benefit of the Turkish people, blit in order that the kings of finance may safely extend their interest-making area. They are rapidly coming to the same conclusion as Solomon, that “ money 13 the root, of all evil”; therefore feel less kindly towards the possesses of gre&t -wealth, and especially agairtst fclidteo kings of finance as represented‘ in the Rothschilds whom it is the fashion to believe are the controllers of kingdoms and empires, and whose influence helps to keep up the strain of preparations for war yet staves off the final conflict of arms. Here, again, is a cause why the more ignorant and undisciplined masses in Pads should so readily fall to Jew-baiting. Jt is the merciless autocratic power wielded in Germany and some other nations by its military that keep 3 so far the Upperhand of similar exhibitions of discontent. In contrast to the military repression exercised so fully on the Continent# it may be instructive to call attention to the great power of moi*al restraint exercised in Britain by such powerful organisations as the engineers and other labour unions during the present struggle. Thu New Age, a journal for . thinkers and workers, not a rabid Radical of the Reynolds’ type, in discussing, the question of “ Must trades unions go ? ” says :—“ If our workmen are finally convinced of the utter powerlessness of their organisations ; if they are taught once for all the omnipotence of a combination of capitial; who is there that will face complacently the destructive forces of despair and of class bitterness that will spring from such a lesson? What fatal power will then be given to the cry, ‘Down with the capitalist!’ What irresistible influences will urge the sanest of us into a blind Samson-like protest against tfie power of property so cruelly held ! Granted that everything said against Trades Unionism be true, the British workman will be infinitely more dangerous to social order and industrial peace when he is compelled to regard his unions as down-fallen idols.” The remarks as to Russia and France and the readiness with which the more out-at-elbow masses find excuse for Jew-baiting should be au indication of what ’’ritish workmen may be driven to if the “relent- | less and resistless power of organised • capital succeeds in its present attempt to | smash tbe trade unions.” The most. ! conservative protective organisations ! of Great Britain will thweby be ■ wrecked, and with them the who’e range of friendly and seif - helpful and civic societies and associations will all be weakened and gradually decay. By this means conspiracies will arise. Then | will come capital-baiting on the line of j foreign Jew-baiting. Here, again, the New Age :—“ Especially do we appeal to those j clergymen who are amongst our readers to | make the pulpit ring with the gospel of- 1 social justice and righteousness.” So says every true lover of the British people and its great Empire.—l am, &c , J.K.

Sir, —Passing any opinion on the Dreyfus episode woul 1 at present be but presumption on the part of the best informed outsiders, for the reason that the facts of the case, on which alone any approach to sound judgment could be formed, are not known, and are not likely to be got at while so many powerful rulers and frictions are interested in distorting and smothering the truth. The bitter feeling arousdd may be taken as an indication, of the intense hatred entertained by large numbers of the French people against the Jew expert interest-monger, just as Jew-baiting by the fleeced Russian peasantry and industrial classes indicated how they felt. I certainly have no desire to see Jew-baiting in New* Zealand, nor to road of it elsewhere, and in saying my letter is “ hostile to Jews as a class and in sympathy with their persecutors” is misjudging. I do not say they are good exemplars. Far from it. The Jew is but an instance of the results naturally following the pursuit through generation after generation of the one occupation of money-getting and for the controlling power over alien nations through the money-power. The earliest recorded start (so far as I know) was when they borrowed from the Egyptians prior to tho forty years' ramble, after they had got

tbeit matching orders, knowing fall well they never intended to return. I should be inclined to think such " borrowing ” of gold and silver and valuables generally was justifiablo at that time, for the record Hia!lc3 out that they had been worked and treated moat 'unmercifully during their lotig £eats of bondage by their Egyptian owners.- They were bat "borrowing” what duiodlited to wages duly earned, btit which was kept from them by their all powerful taskmasters. It may come to p.iSs that whefl tbs Utterly Unbearable condition of the Jews ah it was in Egypt is reached by the workers of the world through the relentless and resistless power of capitalism of the present day, there may be similar borrowing from the present despoilers of the labouring classes, with the similar result that the oorfdw* ings will never bo returned. All the plagues Egypt may be set down as. a species of Egyptian-baiting. The hearts of the ruling power were so hardoned; they were ao greedy, and were so merciless in the treatment of their Jewish bondslaves, that a higher thau human power appears to have undertaken the chastening of the Egyptiaus. The drastic process had become necessary, all pleading, prayer and sullenness on the part of the Jews having no effect on their masters and Controllers, 'lire Egyptians were worried to'the uttermost of theit endurance by the 10 plagues of Egypt, but in spite of all they clung steadfastly to their unjustly acquired advantages, and would not relax their hold. They were altogether too over reaching, and had to be Chastened. Finally a lot of them got drowned in the Bed Sea, and this set their former prisoners frCe. This should point a moral. As the Jews were early birds in inculcating among themselves the doctrine of thrift and the art of money-getting, so they were early birds in the matter of “ cornering ” as understood at the present day. Telegrams just to hand announce that a Cuicago speculator boasts that he has secured all .the surplus wheat in America, presumably in anticipation of making heaps of money during the expected coming scarcity, Joseph and his brethren multiplied exceedingly in Egypt, and, being forewarned of a time of groat scarcity, he’ ptoVided against eventualities by making the firstcorner- in wheat. His intentions may have been goody but they proved profitable, and in this matter he has not proved a good exemplar to the modern world, for very hard names, if of any use, would be justifiable agaiust the cornerer of the staff of life. After getting to the land flowing with milk and honey, rich also in all the heart and appetite of man could desire, the excessive pursuit of thrift led to similar evils developing among themselves as had been the curse of Egypt, and when the chastener and would-be reformer and Saviour came, they crucified Him. To me these items, added to the always prolific propogation of their kind, which proved a terror to Ku'Sia and is the basis of enmity in France, do not count them good exemplars. In each case they rather appear to have been flying in the face of Providence, or, as others put it. breaking the natural law, by their one-sided excess developments. Solomon saw it plain enough—" Money is the root of all evil/’ An extract I have just come across from Frederic Harrison, a widely-known writer among what aro known as the Positivists, says: —“ Our present type of society is in many respects one of the most horrible that has ever existed in the world’s history—boundless luxury and self-indulgence at one end of the scale, and at the other a condition of life as cruel as that of a Koman slave, and more degraded than that of a South Sea Islander.” This, it may he added, is the result of the whole-souled pursuit of money. Imitation and adaptation of Jewish methods appeai-3 to me to be the genesis of modern day combines and trusts, the results being shown in the monopoly of the earth by the com few, of m *ney, of machinery, and tho making of slaves of the millions outside the select circle or what ia former day? was known as the chosen people It seems to mo the unrest throughout the wtuker-woild indicates the •coming lime of reformer retribution and the fiiht si nmerings of discontent are being exhibited against those who have attained to the highest stage of development in the art of money getting or worship of the golden calf. It is,pretty generally known what Moses did in the earlier days of its being set up by the Israelites. Indications are that the halffed and starving millions of the civilised nations or industrial world will themselves unite to form a modern Moses. Baron Birsch appear? to have been one to foresee a possible culmination of exploitation by the money power, hence his strenuous efforts to save a remnant of his people by trailing them away from their persecutors to newer countries where they could develop to endurable conditions of life on more salf-helpful lines than was open to them in the older world. It is not a matter of hating and baiting that will remove an acknowledged and world - wide evil, but an endeavour to follow out in practice the care for others principle. It is a case for all to mend our ways, and as far as possible to avoid extremes. But the quick step for betterment cannot be taken until it becomes possible for newspapers to open their columns to many-sided statements. They cannot at present do so and live. Hence the impossibility at present of laying the foundations of a better understanding between the wealthy and the poor.—l am, &0., J.K.