The Labour Movement.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 6233, 4 June 1890, Page 3

The Labour Movement.

Dunedin Herald. It would be perhaps just as well that workmen should put steadily before them what it is they want, There is nothing whatever to be gained by concealment, and the absence of a definite, well understood aim is always apt to make efforts uncertain. The object of the present movement is to obtain a more equal division of profits, so that no longer should ono party get seventy-five and the other party twenty-five per cent. The individualistic theory initiated the lowest and most ferocious forms of nature’s struggles, sanctified so to speak, by its canons. The lowest instincts of human nature accredited to the world the vilest and most selfish longings of the human heart. The result has been the infinite degradation of labour—a result inevitable from the deification of the rapacious instincts we share in common with the wolf and' the vulture. Freetrade in effect said : » Let the indigent go to the wall, the unsuccessful die out.’ It was the apotheosis of inhumanity—a very law of death. However

necessary it may have been in the law of evolution that trade and commerce should pass through so barbarous an experience, the new theory that capital and labour are less servant and masior Ik an followworkers and co-equals lias much to reeom mend it to the true lover of his kind- We put in the forefront plainly this object, namely, a larger share in the profit to the workmen in the concern. No matter whether it is arrived at by diminishing the hours of labour to four or five a day, and determining a fixed maximum, or whether by the straight road of a direct increase of the labourer’s weekly receipts, the result is exactly the same and along with the obtaining of this result there will naturally come an improved standard of work to which the modern world has long been strange. Before the individualistic mania took possession of industry, skilled workmen took a pride in their work, which has for many long years been most unusual. Ilia great trade guilds of mediaeval times wore posreiful corporations in the State, and the various members of those guilds were possessed of a skill and honesty, a respect for the dignity of their craft, and a capacity for exquisite woremnnsbip, which ore all too uncommon now. There works live still, and are visible examples of both the capacity to execute and the fine moral worth of the workman. The story of tho stone in on ancient cathedral, which was as carefully chiselled on the inner and unseen side as on tho outer side turned to the publie eye, is an example of what wo mean. Modern contractors, with their clerks of works, are past masters in the art of giving the least possible amount of work for the largest possible amount of money. We do not blame them ; they are but the natural outcome of the system under which they were bred. The convulsions of the labour world are the remonstrances of humanity against tbe monstrous demands of the individualists. Hereafter we expect to to see a time when in return for a sufficient share of the joint profits, the lion and the lamb will lie down together, and tho lamb will not be inside tbe hon. To quit allegory for fact, we hope tho time will come when artisans, being practically partners, will bo unwilling to cheat themselves, by giving themselves to scamped work, when capital will feel no call to try and squeeze the last penny out of tho joint concern in which it is only a partner.