Trade Competition.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 8, Issue 22, 19 March 1897, Page 2

Trade Competition.

[CONTKIBUTKD.] Everybody is familiar with the words ."competition is the lite of trade," and " the death ot the workers" might well have been added by the originator of this stereotyped phrase. In this young country of ours the : effects of keen competittori are not so painfully evident as in the older countries of the world, where, extreme poverty is so common and the bare necessaries of lite so difficult to obtain; but, even here people need only to be possessed of the ordinary powers of observation to see abundant evidences of the fact that we are fast getting into the same commercial groove M obtains in the older parts of the ■'■' world. Though, nationally speaking, we may ultimately become prosperous; individually, we tend, to become, as in paragon (?) England a nntion of millionaires and paupers. By writing in the foregoing strain I may be deemed pessimistic; but, being imbued with strong,, satrJo.tfc\ feel^s^J^ 0 caop,efc ■. Wriuh/ift- there' is "sometbih'g-:dev ; cidedly paiirful in the realisation of the fact that so many of the beaming faces we see issuing' from our schools daily are, probably, destined to ber come, as in England, bond slaves to the cruel and vicious system of trade competition, though, unwillingly and through no .fault of thejr own. In walking the streets of bur Empire [City there, is, not the slightest, difficulty in discerning those employed in its factories? the wd'menV" by their wan faces and often emaciated . figures. Whai must it be in the factories of .Mother England where they work, in many cases, twice as long, and all for a miserable pittance, , barely sufficient to keep body and soul together ? This is the result of the universal and corrupt system of trade competition intensified by the employers in their greedy endeavours to secure trade. The rich idlers alone . benefit by- trade as ; they, get the commodities they require at ridiculously Jowl prices, while; . employer -will i;4ke, his. profit and the workers have, to toil long hours at starvation wages to enable him to do so. Inali cases itis the labourer that has to suffer for ioinr prices, the rich man cannot lose, the employer will not, so the worker must, there is nothing for him to gam, because the cheaper commodities become through competition the lower his wages fall. However, it is useless to dilate upon this universal, though abortive system, as the efforts of the many Trade Unions and Labour Organisations have failed fca accomplish any mase4&l ; : possible without a world-wide revolutionary conflict and the acceptance of a purely socialistic regime. This, however, is a luxury of the very dim future that we shall not live to see. But, oh! the thoughts of New Zealand, the land of the free, turned into a galley, and its people the slaves.