THE LABOUR WORLD

Southland Times, Issue 17262, 5 February 1913, Page 2

THE LABOUR WORLD

PROBLEMS AND DISCUSSIONS. (By “Worker.”) [Brief contributions on matters concerning the Labour movement are invited; local items are particularly welcome.] MEETINGS. To-night—Painters’ Union. Friday—Carpenters and Joiners. There will be a sitting of the Arbitration Court at Invercargill to-morrow, when the painters’ dispute will be dealt with. A compensation case will also be heard. On February 25 the Conciliation Council will hear the Factory Managers’ and Drivers’ disputes in Invercargill, and the following day the Drivers’ and Storemen’s disputes will be heard at Gore. If a settlement is not then arrived at the Arbitration Court will take a hand, and will make awards in each instance. So far the following Labour candidates have been nominated by Union's affiliated to the Southland District Labour Council to contest the forthcoming municipal elections: —Messrs Jacob Alsweiler, ’ President of the Sawmill Workers’ Union; H. Sharp, President of the Butchers’ Union; A. Glass, Secretary of the General Labourers, Drivers, etc., Union: T. O’Byrne, Secretary of the Sawmill Workers’ Union, and M. J. Forde, President of the Southland District Labour Council.

Although the Massey Government iff pledged to substitute the contract for the co-operative system in the construction of railways, no alteration has yet been made, whereat a big proportion of the party is not pleased, and a good deal of dissatisfaction exists in consequence. Some of the members are endeavouring to force the Government to make the alteration, and I have it on the best of authority that a portion of the party has threatened to create a split if the pledge is not given effect to. However, we shall probably know shortly if the Government intends to take the step.

In conversation with some M.P.’s. during the week they one and all agreed that £3OO per year was too little for a member of Parliament to decently subsist on, owing to election expenses, the cost of living in Wellington,,while Parliament Is sitting, postal and telegraphic expenses, and the many calls that are made by Individuals, and sporting and other bodies, on members, who seem to be fair game for that sort of treatment. For once I heartily concurred with them, and it has for a long time struck me as being absurd that big salaries should be paid to men who administer the laws, while the men who manufactured the laws are compelled to be satisfied with what in the nett amounts to a mere pittance. The members who recently visited us from the North Island would probably be unable to make such trips had they to depend on their honoraria alone. I heard the case stated very humorously on one occasion by a member who is now a Minister. He said that it cost £§oo to get into Parliament, £3OO while one was in Parliament, and £3OO to get out of Parliament. Labour bodies get over the difficulty somewhat by paying their chosen candidates’ expenses.

Peter Kropotkin, in his great work. “Fields, Shops and Factories,” points out that If the cultivatatole area of Great Britain were cultivated as the soil is cultivated on the average in Belgium, instead of producing food for only 17,000,000, it could easily feed 37,000,000 of its population with home products. And if it were cultivated as tlie best farms in Flanders and Lombardy are, it could provide food for 80,000.000 people. As it is. Great Britain is dependent for its meals on foreign nations. Some day it may have sense enough to recognise that the plough is more essential to defence than the Dreadnought.

The "great statesmen” of Britain are wrestling with problems which have long been settled in these “dominions beyond the seas.’’ Politics in the old land, are richer in fossil remains than the strata of the. post-pliocene.

Hugh H. Lusk, in the "Forum," expresses the decided opinion that Socialistic measures in New Zealand have “enormously increased the wealth, contentment, and happiness of the whole people.”

Eugenlsts advocate the segregation or sterilisation of the “eugenically unfit." It’s a shallow creed, and a cruel one, that first connives at the crime of creating the unfit, and then, as a remedy, proposes the crime of dehumanising them.

In Spain revolutionary discontent has become so acute that King Alphonso, in a fright, has seen the Republican leader, and assured him he is in favour of oldage pensions, religious toleration, the extension of the franchise, and the liberalising of education. Fear in the heart of the king is sometimes as good for progress as courage in the heart of the people.

As far away as 35 years ago Henry George feared that capitalistic “civilisation” would be overthrown by a violent uprising, unless in the meantime measures were taken to establish society on the firm foundations of justice. His fears were well grounded, though the remedy of the Single Tax. which lie put forward with such great eloquence, could not possibly cure the evil. Nothing short of Socialism can.

Hearst, the newspaper millionaire, says that “What the American people object to is not live wealth, but' dead wealth—wealth that stagnates in the hands of incompetents or mere idlers and drones." But when the American people are wise to their own interests they'll object to “live’’ wealth, too —the wealth that has the brains of cunning and the teeth of rapacity, and pursues them like a ravenous beast of prey.

“A human life sacrificed on the altar of dividends,” is the scathing epitaph inscribed by relatives on the tombstone of St. Clair Stone, killed in Mt Lyell disaster on October 21.

“Since I began to reflect,” wrote George Meredith in one of his letters. “I have been oppressed by the injustice done to women, the constraint put upon their natural aptitudes and faculties, generally much to the degradation of the race.” Nearly everyone who reflects is similarly oppressed by the same fact. It’s very depressing to think that one half the human race is permanently employed in preventing the natural development of the other half; and that other the half which is mostly responsible for the mental equipment of the whole.

In Germany young boys and girls are carefully instructed in Socialism by trained professors. who Rive regular courses, and teach the essential facts of economics and sociology.

If Belfast does not bang Banngher or New York for sweating, these sweat shops must take a lot of banging. in the report of a Home Office Committee on the linen trade it is stated that a young woman engaged at a factory in Belfast, earned an hour, after paying l%d for thread and her tram fare to and" from the factory. Site was employed in making chemises at nd petdozen. And little children in some of the linen mills are worked from 4 a,m. to 10 p.m.

Farming is entering the machine stage, and the primitive spade agriculturist is on his way to become the servant of the machine owner. The world's record in ploughing is said to have been eclipsed in Indiana (U.S.), when throe traction engines hitched to SO ploughs turned over a stubble field at the rate of an acre every four minutes and JR seconds.

Beneath this stone there lies at rest a man who always did his best. The gods ordained that ho should move along a lowlv, bumble groove. For him there was no wealth or fame, he bore no proud ancestral name, no palace doors for him swung wide, but in his hut he lived and died. His years were many and his toil brought riches from the stubborn soil, but ail that wealth to them was brought who owned the land where on he wrought. He fashioned lumber and the boards made shelter for the languid hp fed the cores and herded swine that other men might nobly dine. From break of dawn tin close of day he toiled along bis wpsrv way. and took his earnings in his hand to fatten those who owned the land. His feet were

seamed with bramble scars that others might have motor cars. This strip of ground is his reward; 'twas given by his over-lord. It's six feet long and two feet wide, and here they brought, him when he died. To labour hard for 50 years, endure the burdens and the tears; to have no grateful hours of rest; to toil and bend and do your best; to grind and moil and delve and save, and at the last to get a grave! Poor souls, that In the darkness grope and weave and spin and have no hope. Always as Labour has hung upon the cross of class slavery lie has caught glimpses of a freedom that might be. Once that vision was the Golden Age behind him. Then for ages more the vision was dim, its outlines distorted by ignorance and agony. But each succeeding eon of pain brought new capacity to draw strength from that very agony. Each desperate struggle that loosened the bonds ever so little brought opportunity more clearly to search out the road that leads to the kingdom of liberty. To-day the vision is clear, the way is charted, the unconquerable strength that is born of numbers united in bonds of brotherhood is ready to achieve that liberty. The old body of Labour that knew only suffering and misery and slavery and crucifixion is dying. The new spirit of rebellion and solidarity and brotherhood and freedom is arising The race lifting up to a new resurrection when the old earth and the old hell shall pass away and a new earth shall be born. —A. M. Simmons. Struggling on, step by step, in the face of a thousand odds, a caravan plods tli rough a vast desert. There are misfortunes, mistakes —even temporary dis. asters, but, urged on by the exhortations of Moses and strengthened by an unfaltering trust, the Israelites march on toward the Land of Promise. . . . Tli re© thousand years and more pass by, and the Drama of Life repeats itself. Here is the same struggle, the same exhortations. and a far-off but shining Canaan. The caravan, now, is Humanity, and the desert is Capitalism and Economic Brotherhood the promised land. All, all are a part of this movement — even those who hate it; even the capitalists and the priesthood, even they are swept along with it; though striving to retard the march, they are unconsciously helping it forward In spite of themselves. The caravan is Humanity and Socialism is its vanguard—the Socialists are the pioneers, the intrepid scouts a little in advance of the mass. At times a band of . these mount an eminence and study the line of march; and it is these explorers on the heights that catch the first glimpses of the land that is the common goal.