National Problems

Southland Times, Issue 15171, 15 February 1902, Page 3

National Problems

TO THE EDITOR. Sot,— l have read ♦' Worker's " letter on *' National Problems," and your leader on the letter, and I think you handled " Worker's " sophisms, which he imagined were arguments, very effectively. "Worker" was deputed by the trade unionists to reply to your leader of 16th January on the same ■abject. It does not appear when he received his brief as counsel for the defendant Unionists, but it is presumable that, after getting it, he took his own time in preparing^Hs "philippic." And I must say that if that is the best performance of the best gum among trade unionists of this district there is not much talent for controversy among them. "Worker," like most of his dassj.tries to supply deficiencies^ argument by traducing his opponent. In replying to jour statement that trade unionism had not only limited the hours of work, but had limited the amoont of work in a given time, ** Worker" characterises that as a "ruthless statement," and then tries to substantiate his own statement by a lot of hazy remarks, in which he says newspaper writers are not very particular and manufacture national problems, and that you only adduced solitary instances of a bricklayer and an engineer working at a slew rate in support of your statement, which, "Worker" says, is inadmissable for proving that an attempt to limit the amount of work in agiven time is or has been made. If that is "Worker's'' honest opinion touching that matter/ then I must say that the trade unionists of this district have committed their case to a man who^is wholly ignorant of the object and aims of trade unionism in England, the country referred to. I have ' some data by me that will knock all haziness out of "Worker" on the question of limiting the amount of work to be done in the day. "Worker" says that unions in the Old Country did nothing in shortening or lengthening the number of hours to the day's work, either in the past or recently. We will see what the book says : During the great engineering strike in England, a tew years ago, Tom Mann, who is now in this colony, was employed by the engineers' onion to lecture through the country, and this is some of what he said : "We shall not remain contented for ever with an eight hour day. Democracy is now shaping itself not merely to get an eight hour day— that is by the way— but in order to get their feet enectually planted for something else." That was said at Leeds in July of the year of the Strike. One ' of the demands of the Engineers' Union during the great strike was for an eight hour day. But what was that fomething else referred to by Tom Mann ? Another unionist, named Ratcliffe, said on another occasion : " The machine question is the real cause of the dispute, and not the eight hour question. The masters are fighting in order to be able to do what they like in their own workshops. The men will never allow them to do that. It is to prevent it that the A.S.K. exists." The way this limiting the output was managed the following will show. •• In finishing, eight hinges for ammunition boxes was the number done by one man in a day. Ihe foreman knew that this was not a day's work, and changed the man a number of times, but got no more than eight. He put a young Swiss, who did not speak. English, to the job, and the first day he did fifty." Another instance was the "fixing up of outside handles of machine gnus. It was found that any number of society workmen did only one for a day's work. The work was given to a gun filer who did not belong to any society, and he did twelve in the day." These two instances of limiting the amount of work to be done by union men are selected from a good number of similar oases, as described in an article on the engineert 5 strike, by Mr Benjamin Taylor, in the Nineteenth Century for April, 1898. Trade unionism has always been carried on on the principle of " everyone for himself, 'and the devil take the hindermost." I don't object to the principle, because it is of no use to do so. What I object to is being among the hindermost. But there must be hindermost in this case, just as surely as there are in escaping from a theatre on fire. None but very ignorant people now believe, that this labour question u a question between labour and capital only. It is a question between worker and worker in every free country. And in this colony the truth of this is so plain that a wayfaring man, though a fool, need make no mistake about it. If a baker raises the wages of his employes and then raises the price of his loaf (he has done this several times lately), the buyer of the loaf pays the •xtra wages. If the buyers of the Dread be butchers, bootmakers, tailors, bricklayers, carpenters, and tradesmen generally, and they all get » corresponding rise in wages, they lose nothing. But who do these tradesmen sell the produce of their labour to at their enhanced values ? They sell to the direct producer from thesoiL And who do they sell to ? Partly to the tradesman and partly to customers beyond sea, and the price of what he sells in the local market is governed by the price obtained in the foreign market. And it is here where the devil gets his own.— The hindermost the cockatoos with the green topknots. He is the man who eats his oread in the sweat of his own brow. He could make his customers sweat for him because of(the sweating he is the subject of. And all this trades unionism was started to dry up sweating, but it has only shif ted its venue from town to country. The burden which trade unionists shut from their own shoulders, falls upon the shoulders of Brother Hodge and remains there. — I am, etc., HINDERKOST. Feb. 14.