THE REAL BATTLE OF LABOUR.

Otago Witness, Issue 2928, 27 April 1910, Page 18

THE REAL BATTLE OF LABOUR.

Mr R, F. Way lectured at the Alhambra Ineatr© on Sunday on "The Real Battle of Labour." Despite the bleak night, there was a large attendance, and the lecturer was accorded a iiearty recaption. Mr W. 0. Patterson occupied the chair. Tbe lecturer, who illustrated his hour's discourse with humorous parallels, stated that for nine years he had fought the battles of Labour in the Arbitration Court and on the platform, and during the whole of that period he had ever placed before the working class the hopeless impossibility of attaining a betterment of their conditions by useless and tasteless palliative®. Indeed, at the present time they were face to face with this position. In effect, the jiadge of the Arbitration Court had stated: " I have now given awards in nearly every industry in the colony, and I will not alter those awards unless the unions can show me eome difference in conditions to justi f y such a course." They had repeatedly been told that the court had nothing to do with rents and the cost of living, and the court had definitelw asserted in fact, "thus far, no further." They certainly had a Workers' Compensation Court, which gave a carter £1 2s a week if his ribs were broken while in employment. They also had hospitals which charged him in Auckland £1 15s a week to patch his ribs up so thas'he had 13s of a debit balance to keep his wife on, and landlords would not accept- a debit balance for rent. He sketched the results of years of Liberalism, and contended that in spite of all the alleged reforms human life in New Zealand to-day was not of as much value as the animal's. " We have in Auckland," said the lecturer, "a quaran-

tine station called Motu Hi. If a poodle were imported to the colony i* was quarantined there under the supervision of a man paid by the workers' money. It would be a shame if this poodle brought in some disease which would poison the lap dogs of the rich." We had State-paid expertsi to attend to the cow, the horse, the apple crop, and the pigs; but in spite of all our Pharisaical humbug about our humanity a woman of the working class could give birth to a child in the back streets of our cities and we had no State experts to save the life of the woman and her bairnies.—(Applause.) The cow was a splendid national asset. They were almost wheeling the babies in perambulators with a bucket to extract this wealth from the cow; but he demanded' that human mothers and human babes of the working class —the producers of all wealth —should at least be treated with as much kindly solicitude as the eternal cow. He pointed out how the capitalistic system had produced poverty, unemployment, degradation, and starvation in every country in the world; and the same capitalistic system would inevitably produce the same results here. It had already done so. The only hope of the workers lay in the sweeping away of the present system and the institution of a scientific system founded on justice, reason, and truth—the Socialistic system. "Rise up from your knees. You have grovelled long enough at the feet of your masters, whom you feed. Stand up on your feet as men and women, and march onward with intelligence and determination to the attainment of the goal of freedom, liberty, and the highest possible civilisation. You produce the wealth of New Zealand. Go and get it for yourselves, that is your battle. Fight it like men, unbonded with prejudice and hate, but determined to sweep from New Zealand once and for ever a system that has made you slaves, that will enslave your children and their children after them.