THE WOOLLEN MILL DIFFICULTY.

New Zealand Times, Volume LI, Issue 8965, 16 April 1890, Page 2

THE WOOLLEN MILL DIFFICULTY.

TO THE EDITOR 01 THE NEW ZEALAND TIMES. Sip.,— l observe in Saturday’s papers a letter from a Mr J. Berry referring to a somewhat officious interference of his in a dispute between the Pitone Woollen Factory Directors and some of their workers. Arbitration is no doubt a good thing if impartial arbitrators can be obtained, but in a conflict between capitalists and labourers it is difficult to find anyone who does not belong to one class or another, and therefore has a more or less personal interest in the issue to be determined. For remember, this petty dispute is part of a world-wide contest between the workers, who are the producers of capital, and the so-called capitalists, who appropriate it. Unions and the associations of the Knights of Labour are established to bring about a more equitable division of the profits of trade and manufactures than has hitherto prevailed. The workers or capital producers can have, by thorough combination, the whole of the power of trade and legislation in their hands, and can pass when they like measures that will redress the inequalities that are the direct result of laws passed by the classes for the masses. Evidently Mr Berry is out of place in interfering in this struggle and intruding with his religious views and “pure motives.” It will take some time to teach the operatives that their future progress depends wholly on their determination to combine under the best leaders of their own class they can get; but they are seeing this more clearly every day, and the time cannot be very distant when all workers will he arrayed under one banner to maintain their right to the proceeds of their own labour. When that time comes persons like Mr Berry will be found to be useless, although ornamental, because the great source of evil will be removed, viz., want and ignorance.—l am, &c., Yir. [The writer of this letter is about as onesided as he can be. He is apparently incapable of looking at both sides of the question at issue, and writes the radi- . cal claptrap of the day.— Ed.] We have swerved a little lately from the strict lines of journalistic etiquette in publishing reports and letters dealing with the Wellington Woollen Mill trouble. Yesterday we published Mr T. K. Macdona'd’s reply to the Rev J. Berry’s letter, and the reply of the Secretary of the Federated Trades Union to Mr Macdonald, and we now publish the latter’s reply to the Secretary as it appeared in the Evening Post of last night, as follows “Sir,—On the Ist instant I had to show l in your columns that Mr D. P. Fisher had uttered a wilful untruth respecting myself. As I make it a rule never to discuss public matters with men who have proved themselves unfit to adhere to facts, Mr D. P. Fisher’s utterances will at all times be treated by me with the contempt they merit. Mr Fisher and his colleagues have shown that they want blatant agitation, not an impartial opinion from disinterested arbitrators. The public have now weighed them in the balance. —I am, &c., “T. Kennedy Macdonald.”