THE REAL SUFFRERERS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 16985, 23 April 1917, Page 2

THE REAL SUFFRERERS.

TO THE KDITOIt. Sir,—There is a point which has not so far been touched upon at all in the letters to the Daily 'Junes; and that is that the real penalty for the strike comes on the poor, as it usually docs. The labour agitator professes to love his. fellow labourer, yet ho does not hesitato at this time of national crisis to agitate for a state of civil war, simply for his own glorification. His plea is that if bis agitation succeeds the Government will be forced to conscript wealth further. The real result is that it brings distress to thousands of poor hearths where no provision can bo made for a, coal famine, and where the coal must of necessity bo bought by the hundredweight. It is assorted —and I think the assertion is true- —that 30 per cent, of the coal miners do not wish to strike at all. and that it is simply the seditious agitator at their b.ick, who is hanging out the conscription bogey because he has no hotter excuse for his cordial dislike of any selfsacrifice whatever. What, I ask, do the fathers and mothers of our fallen sons and brothers think of such men as these, who do not hesitato to stop all our railways and steamboats at a moment when we have the best hope we ever had of final victory; when our long years of agony and suspense seem to be coming to a successful end? What do they think, when they see their sacrifices treated as nothing worth by men who have no touch of patriotism, no wish to see victory crown the banners of their country.. We aro reaping the penalty now of our foolish pandering to the Labour Party in the past; and the labour representative is proving a worse and moTO harmful tyrant than the mediaeval monarch ever did.—l am, etc., Nemo.