INDUSTRIAL WORLD

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23706, 13 January 1939, Page 3

INDUSTRIAL WORLD

NEWS AND NOTES By J. T. Paul Even when one thinks a view unsound, or a scheme unworkable, one must regard all honest efforts to improve this unsatisfactory world with a sympathy ■ which recognises how many things need to be changed, and how many doctrines once held irrefragable need to be modified in the light of inconvenient facts. —Viscount Bryce. TO CORRESPONDENT W. J. B„ Dunedin.—Many thanks for the latest favours. COLLECTION OF UNION DUES At the recent conference of delegates from unions comprising the New Zealand Bootmakers’ Federation of Workers it was decided to alter the system of payment of members’ contributions from January. Under the old system contributions were not paid in advance, the member being liable to pay after he or she had worked the first week and thenceforward collected weekly This meant that the secretary, as collector. had to start visiting the factories on Friday of each week, taking till the following Wednesday to complete the round. From now on there will be monthly collections in advance, and the secretaries will have more time available to conserve the interests of the members. By taking this move the bootmakers have come into line with the other unions and federations of the Dominion.

TRADE UNION MEMBERSHIP Although the year 1937 created a record union membership of 232,986 for the Dominion, it is expected that the returns to the Labour Department for the year just finished will show an even greater increase. There is still a considerable number of workers in industry not yet covered by the compulsory unionism clauses of the In dustrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act. and the Government has indicated its intenton to amend the Act to cover people such as_ workers on commission collectors on time payments, gardeners for private individuals, and personal servants, so that they. too. will be able to have their own unions. The secretary of the Auckland Trades Council states that “ saturation point of union membership has not yet been reached.” and higher figures may yet be expected. LIMITATION OF DRIVING HOURS The Minister of Transport for Queensland has drawn attention to the provisions of the State Transport Act of 1938, w'hich came into operation on January 3, 1939, regarding the limitation of the hours during which drivers of passenger or goods vehicles may be worked. The Act. which is based on similar legislation in other parts of the Empire, provides for a maximum period of continuous driving of five hours and a-half at a time, or 11 hours in any period of 24 hours commencing at midnight. Drivers must have at least 10 consecutive hours for rest in any period of 24 hours from the start of driving, and in every seven days at least 24 consecutive hours. AN \MERICAN TRAGEDY After 20 years’ imprisonment, Tom Mooney, the world’s most discussed nrisoner, is a free man. His conviction Is now generally regarded as a travesty of justice, his continued imprisonment one of those peculiar anomalies which can occur in a liberty-loving country. It has long been recognised by jurists that a miscarriage of justice is more easily possible in the United States than in almost any other Eng-lish-speaking country. Tom Mooney was a stormy petrel in the Labour world. He had been concerned in strikes in which dynamite had been employed, but there was no evidence that he had been a party to its use. His conviction and sentence of death arose out of a bombing outrage in San Francisco on July 22, 1916. The death sentence was changed to imprisonment for life,, and the long struggle for a new trial for Mooney began at once. Two months after Mooney was convicted, Frank C. Oxman was charged with perjury because of his testimony in the case. He was defended by counsel retained by the district attorney and was acquitted. Nevertheless, the disclosures at the trial led to the presiding judge asking the attorney-general to petition the United States Supreme Court for a new trial. This was done, but the United States Supreme Court held that it was powerless to act. By this time the interest in the case was world wide, and there was a demonstration before the United States Embassy in Russia. Next followed the trial of Mrs Mooney and a man named Israel Weinberg, a taxi driver, who had been arrested for complicity in the crime. Both were '•quitted. Next the President’s Mediations Commission reported that Mooney did not have a fair trial, and in January, 1918, President Wilson urged Governor Stephens to grant Mooney a new trial. Two months later, Mooney having asked for a pardon, the California Supreme Court reaffirmed his conviction, declaring that it could not review perjury disclosed after the trial. At the end of the year the United States Supreme Court refused to review the case.

The matter was by now seen to be one for the State of California, and President Wilson twice urged Governor Stephens to act. The Governor then commuted Mooney’s death sentence to life imprisonment. That was in November. 1918, and the next sensation came early in 1921. when John McDonald, who had testified that he had seen Mooney and Billings at the scene of the explosion, repudiated his testimony, and said that he had been told to identify Mooney, had been coached in his testimony, and had altered his evidence at the request of the prosecution.

The case dragged on for years, during which the Supreme Court of California held that the repudiation by McDonald of his testimony was not convincing, and that “ his former story rang true.” A dissenting opinion, however, referred to a photograph showing Mooney and his wife (who maintained that they were never at the scene of the crime) on a building some distance from the place of the explosion. The photograph shows a clock which, when enlarged, indicated that the time was within the period at which McDonald placed Mooney and Billings near the scene of the explosion

In 1930 the Governor rejected Mooney’s application for a pardon, and, though the case was reopened in 1930, and Mr James Walker, when Mayor of New York, made a special trip to California in connection with the case in 1931, nothing has been accomplished until now. In April 1932, Governor Rolph added his name to the list of executives to refuse Mooney’s effort to gain a pardon. The Wickersham Commission on Law Enforcement reported that the prosecution of Mooney had. included “ flagrant violations of the statutory law of California.” and that witnesses had been coached to the extent of subornation of perjury, and other acts of unfairness taken place. In 1935 Mooney applied for a writ of Habeas Corpus and in 1937 a five-to-one decision by the California Supreme Court rejected his plea Last year he made a persona] appeal to the California Assembly for a pardon: the vote for it was 39 for and 33 against, two short of the majority needed to set him free. At that time he said he had never asked for parole because he wanted a full pardon or a new trial. Later the Assembly voted a pardon by 41-29: the Senate almost unanimously voted against it. Last October the United States Supreme Court once again refused to review his sentence