The Southland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING, Luceo Non Uro. WEDNESDAY, MAY 10, 1922. CAN THEY HAVE IT BOTH WAYS?

Southland Times, Issue 19511, 10 May 1922, Page 4

The Southland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING, Luceo Non Uro. WEDNESDAY, MAY 10, 1922. CAN THEY HAVE IT BOTH WAYS?

At a time when trades unions are voicing angry protests against the high costs of freights and the effect on the cost of living, it. is surprising to find the Seamen’s Union in Australia launching an attack on the extension of the use of oil fuel in steamers. There is a contradiction here which the union will find it hard to explain if it is to keep the attention of the public. The union’s stand on the question of oil fuel goes back to the days when working men broke machinery because it threatened, according to them, to put thousands of men out of employment, and it is surprising that these ancient and exploded notions should persist into I;he twentieth century and be used as a war-cry for an attack on capitalism. Some little tune ago a vote was taken in America on the inventions which had had the greatest influence in the world in recent times, and ,Kigh up on the list, second as a matter ’of fact, came the linotype. When the linotype came into be-

ing it was believed that the result of its introduction into newspaper offices would be to reduce the number of compositors employed. As the world knows, the result was just the opposite. The linotype made great newspapers possible, they were the direct cause of the establishment of the great world Press as we see it to-day, spreading its services all over the world and employing more men in one country than were then working in all the newspaper offices of the world. This extension resulted in cheaper newspapers and in cheaper literature of all kinds, the book trade alone providing employment for more men than anyone in the pre-lino days could have thought of in his wildest dreams. ’l'he experience of the linotype has been the experience of machinery in most industrial activities. Coming back to the oil fuel question, we are faced first with the undeniable fact that the shipping companies are extending the use of oil fuel in steamers because it is cheaper and more efficient than the old system of coal fuel and firing, and this means that reductions in freights wjll become possible where otherwise shipping companies could not consider them. When sea-borne transportation becomes cheaper countries like. Australia and New Zealand, to whom the sea communications are of vital importance, will benefit enormously, and this benefit filters through all parts of the community. The Seamen’s Union in conjunction with this attack on the use of oil fuel raises the old cry that it is out for “workers’ control of industry and production for use and not for profit.” Can these two things be reconciled? Or does it mean that the union really seeks to secure control of this particular industry so that it may adhere to the more expensive system of fuelling in order that fifty instead of eighteen men can find employment? This means, of course, that the profit of the men in the shipping industry is to be secured at the expense of those who are outside of it. If oil fuel is cheaper and more efficient, it stands to reason that the more extensively it is used the greater will be the benefits accruing to the people of the world, of whom the seamen are a part. In this case the application of oil fuel to the Bay steamers, which are not controlled by private enterprise, ensures a more direct benefit to the people of Australia than would be the case in connection with other shipping companies, and the revival of the old cry of: “Down with all improved methods” by the Seamen’s Union looks very much like the adoption of an attitude which is the very negation of the “for use and not for profit” cry, which the union voices with so much unction. The union cannot have it both ways; either it is out for use and not for profit for itself, or for profit for itself and not for use.