The Labor Movement.

NZ Truth, Issue 351, 16 March 1912, Page 8

The Labor Movement.

The Labor Party Conference . is meeting this week at Birminghain, an 3' is discussing a fairly big- agenda paper which advocates many important industrial reforms, including; a legal eight-hours day and the nationalisation of those industries wiiich -Australasia has nationalised. ' Th»r» isissssssfiei^sss- 1 "*""-" • —■--■••• - — -...-..., ..._.^...,

may be no connection, of oourse, but it is remarkably strange that . ihe grandmotherly Conservative press of London chooses this time to warn the j British workers -against the dreadful principle of trades unionism md "professional labor agitators." "Thw Sian- j dard" is quite stupefied with astonishment to discover that THERE ARE 10,000 labor secretaries and other officials paid by the trades, unions of G reat Britain for, organising and secretarial work. The "Standard" calls thes-3 men "agitators battening m affluence", on the poor workers, who "helplessly look up from the hard crust and .stony road m tront of them to meet the demand of Pay, pay, pay!". This kind of piffle would bo very tiresome to read if it were not also striking proof of the fact that organised labor is actually making some progress , here at last, even with the "hard crust and stony road" class .of labor. I was looking up some trade statistics to-day, and I saw that 1,509,876 British workers m the clothing trade earn, an average of 15s Id per week, so English labor needs both agitation and organising. No wonder they "look hopelessly up from: the hard crust." English workers are D.eing driven into 'trades-unionism not because they are convinced of its. great I benefits, but because they have had j one or two striking . object lessons lately, of the way the British employer ; ■ ■ ;. Treats | ¥11^ BKAicKDES 3^. after he has. done his dirty work: In the cotton strike Mr and Mrs Ttiley and the woman named Bury-— the three who. caused all . the trouble through • being non-unionists- -were greeted as heroes, while they served the- employers' terms. The illustrated newspapers ..published- their photographs .as "the three independent workers^ of England." But when they went back/ tp: work, there, was the usualrow," and the Unionists refused- to.. work alongside them. "Shall we<go on- or knock off .?". .asked the man-EHcy of the mill-manager.- The representative of' :capitai. declined to take any steps to protect Capital's hero and : heroine," now they: had ;to ? get -their • own employees back, so Riley and his wife . : " WERE "SQUEEZED OUT. 1 ' v ' Riley won't go back, but his wife has decided to' join the union, which, is a very wise' decision on her part. And the other female blackleg has also been abandoned by. the representatives of Gapital who dubbed her. a .heroine and besought her...; picture while she was. "good copy.".-. But think, of .the hide of. the British press , m wanting, to dictate to the .British worker what he shall do .with ... the ■ Jittle bit of x-ji&h he is permitted to earn! ..••:. '■■'.■