NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVI, Issue 8191, 5 August 1912, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS

Lord Rosebery: “The battle between tho haves and tho have nets is on now. What the result will be I do 1 not care to predict.” The farmer pugnaciously asserts . that he is the salt of the earth, and that without him all would be chaos. Admitted that most things hang around the producer, but surely the farm laborer working for the big farmer produces something. It is just the old, old story of capital or machinery or land—call it what you will —and who own it? Think it over, and you will find that the keynote of Labor is farmer and artisan, agricultural laborer and navvy—in short, the people. The United Labor Party is jumping along in Southland. T. O’Byrne is at the head of the workers there and reports that unions are all the time ’ coming in, Blenheim workers are anxious to have Mills over to discuss United . Labor Party organisation. J. Townsend. secretary of the Marlborough , Bulding Trades Union, is on the move. ; The fixture will be arranged as soon as possible.

- H. A. Corner is busy at Owhango. ' A, charter of the United Labor Party ii is to be issued there and many have 3 promised to link up. One result of the boycott of the Hobart Labor daily, “The Post,” by 3 advertisers has been the formation of a Housewives’ Union which was accom--3 plished last month, some hundreds of 3 workers’ wives joining the new union right away. The business of the new : organisation will be to bring the power * of members to the assistance of the democratic movement and to specially ■ exercise and direct the right of pre- ■ ferential trading, with a view to ob- • taining a square deal for the Labour ' paper. To help the dockers on strike in Great Britain, working people are tak- , ing the strikers’ children into their J: homes, and caring for them. r I Capitalism’s latest product in parai sites is the “blackleg agent.” There 11 are scores of him scouring the continent of Europe at present in the inter--11 ests of British bosses whose men are i battling for better conditions. There is no ono so much to blame for i the violent tactics of the suffragettes 3 in Great Britain as the stupid and ar--3 rogant “statesmen” who in politics 1 treat their mothers, wives, and sisters ■ as aliens and lunatics are treated. ' | Spain was last month plunged in a ■ big industrial war. In many parte of tho country tho railway men were on j strike, and the dockers made common I cause with them. I The Labor vote in Paris has increased from 95,000 in 1904 and 105,000 in - 1903 to 116,000 this year. The Christchurch Labor representation committee has decided to hold a ’ “Jumble Sale” at an early date, for the purpose of providing funds to liquidate certain liabilities that it has incurred. The arrangements are in the hands of Mr Hoppy, who has had considerable experience in the man- . agoment of these concerns.

Labor unrest is no new thing in London. In 1878 Benjamin Franklin was living in Craven street. He was the

most trustworthy of observers, and has left the record of what he witnessed. Coal-heavers pulling down the houses of coal dealers; sailors on strike unrigging all the outward-bound merchantmen? and closing the Port of London till their pay was raised; the very tailors marching down in their thousands to overawe Parliament; that was tho impression London made on the demure observer from Philadelphia. At the recent city elections in Copenhagen, Denmark, nine women were elected to fill municipal offices. It is said that never before nave the women of Denmark shown such lively interest in elections and that their methods were “charactised by clearness, calmness, and balance of mind.” On April 14th women voted for the first time in Belgium, when they were eligible for the Prudhommes councils. Women went in large numbers to the polls and voted solidly for candidates who advocate equal rights for men and women.

With a view to removing the popular prejudice against instruction in sex hygiene in the public schools, a series of lectures is being delivered in Chicago by men and women physicians, to which the parents only are invited. It is expected that the movement will gain such general support that by next year there will be no opposition to the proposition. Dr Raohello S. Yarros. ono of the women physicians, who has been selected by Mrs Ella Flagg Young, superintendent of schools, to deliver lectures, says that she proposes to teach tl:/; mothers tiie danger that results from ignorance ns to sex hygiene and tho perils that confront tho modern girl. “I shall also tell the mothers what they should teach their daughters as to the prevalence of certain diseases and the dangers they represent to tho unborn children and the innocent women.”

The “Railway Officers’ Advocate”' reports that the railway stationmaster who went off for twelve days sick some time ago owing to overwork —and who had the twelve days docked off his holiday—has been refused redress by the management. There is not a .Chinese boss of a vegetable gang who vould treat his subordinates that way.