PAYMENT OF MEMBERS.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 10596, 27 October 1910, Page 4

PAYMENT OF MEMBERS.

[By Electric Telegraph— Copyright.] (Per Press Association.) Received October 27, at 8.55. a.m. London, October 26. The Manchester Guardian's labor correspondent estimates the expenses of the 78 Labor candidates at test elections at £50,000, of which £12,701 was returning officers' fees, and the annual expenditure at £15,000, of which half is for salaries. The unions are also spending £50,000 annually in financing local organisations. 1 The payment of members will be insufficient'to-provide the above expenses. Received October 27, at 9 a.m.

London, October 26. ■ Mr Frederic Harrison, in a letter to The Times, contends that a reversal of the Osborne -judgment is out of the question. He argues that if certain members of the House of Commons are compelled to vote according to the will of the executive of the trade unions they would soon be met by members equally bound to obey the behests lof other corporate bodies such as !■ the banks, railroads, brewers, steel, cotton, shipping, and corn combines. Thus special interest would be represented in Parliament and would so publicly and normally act. Mr FTarri!son adds that doubtless a Bill effecting what' Mr Keir Hardie asks is possible. It might enact tliat any combination of workmen applying its common funds to the- maintenance of salaried members of the House of Commons should not bo decinied a trade union as denned by the Trades'Uniou'AcL, and should not enjoy privileges of immunity conferred by a realstrade union. -- Mr Harrison scathingly denounced the dishonesty of the Socialist minority in tlie trade unions in seeking to capture and divert to Utopian schemes the careful savings of trade unious subscribed to succour the laborer out of work or sickness and old age, or to aid his family at the time of his death.