THE INDUSTRIAL WORLD

Otago Daily Times, Issue 14002, 7 September 1907, Page 13

THE INDUSTRIAL WORLD

NEWS AND NOTES,' Br the Hon. J. T. Paul, 51.L.0. Items of information and brief comments on .'questions coming under this heading are always Iwblcoroc. Books, pamphlets, etc., scut to (ho editor of this column will also bo noticed. • . MEETINGS FOR THE WEEK. Tho following unions will meet during tlio week at the Trades Hall:— Monday.—Tramways, Butchers, Painters (committee). Tuesday.—Plumber3. ■Wednesday.—Labourers. Thursday— Furniture trade. ; £4turday.—Carpehters, Bakers: ARE WE ALL WRONG? This question has no moral significance— it is iin economic query. So many visitors havo told us w« live dh tin industrial pnradiso and lack nothing savo wings that it is an .cxpoticnco lo find all our efforts written down as nil, ■' In the London Labour Leader Mrs <T. It Mao Donald (a recent visitor) and Miss Macartluir liavo had a long controversy on the raspecl.ivo merits of Hoeiali.lm and a legal minimum wage. Miss O.lacartlmr pins lior economic faith oi) *a minimum wage; Mrs Mac Donald saya No, nwl quotes lis as a shocking oxample. Inter alia, Mrs Mac Donald tlcolares: Ivliss Jfacnrtbur'n plea for wages boards as a help in her trado union work would have ippeated -to mo much moro forcibly it I had not been in Australia and New Zealand. . . ; Most disheartening of all is the fact tlial in Now Zealand, though tlio tailoresres have irganiscd and got bonbfita under the • act,,

repeated attempts to organise the worst paid women workers in white needlework, laundries, etc., have failed. They cannot geteven the small number necoscary to'demand intervention .to organise; whilst in Auckland there has been a groat deal of difficulty in preventing the iailoresses from lowering the standard obtained by their fellow-workors in other districts. Not a single difficulty in the way of promoting trado unionism has been permanently removed by either wages boards or Arbitration Acts. « I acknowledge that the lesson I have drawn from Australia and Kew Zealand is to be less patient with palliatives, and even more ardent in going straight for Socialism. We. canlearn something from these new countries of the working" of measures; of control and regulation which we have not attempted here. What I learnt was not to waste time on the more complicated of these, since in the long iuii the capitalist winn his way through' any. law. If, I bad not the larger liopo of Socialism I should clutch at the straw-of wages boards in despair, and because I had nothing better to offer, as soma of my Radical friends do. Tlio regulation, of nominal wjyi is an expedient worthy only of Itadiri l -nd philanthropists, . but certainly not worth' an of a Socialist's timo or a particle of a Socialist's efforts. ' v Mi's Mac Donald may know which is best— Miss Macartluir puts a, good caso to tliocontrary—for tlio English worker;; hut I have no hesitation in saving tliat \!io New Zealand worker was wlsor to acccpt tlio Arbitration Act and. Factories Act than sweat in misery till the Socialistic millennium enmo along. The plain duty of the workers' leader is to take overy advantage offering 1 awl work for 'further Wtormont. ,If Socialism is fight, never fret; it .will come. The iron law of evolution will cvolvo 1 the best. The fewer who starve and suffer in 'the interim the better for file nation. And ill tlio sum of human happiiicss the humanitarian legislation of Now Zealand passed inthe last.ls years has played a largo, part..