LABOUR UNITED.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXV, Issue 84, 16 April 1913, Page 7

LABOUR UNITED.

AN ADDRESS BY MR WALTER T. MILLS.

I Mr Walter T. Mills is not unknown to Stratford citizens. On previous occasions, when lie Inis visited this district, he lias filled the Town Hall, I and if his argument has not convinc- ; cd or his doctrines pleased, ho has at i least delighted all shades of political j opinion and all classes of men and women with his fluent tongue and his ready wit. -’Owing to unforeseen circumstances Mr Mills came to Stratford this time comparatively unannounced, and in consequence the meeting he addressed \vas a small one. .Mr Mills spoke for nearly two hours without in the least wearying Ids audience, and he spent another halfhour in answering questions, the latter being not the least enjoyable portion of the meeting. Mr J. Masters presided. In his opening remarks, the lecturer summarised the unity campaign of labour, and spoke' of the difficulties that had been met, and had still to he faced. It was, ho said, difficult to deal with labour without dealing with ‘the man, and in coming into contact with the man, there were encountered the difficulties of human nature. It was not true that labour alone was difficult to organise; the same difficulties adhered to all sorts of human institutions. ' WHY ORGANISE?

Mr Mills claimed that there was one reason, and one reason only, why organisation of labour was required, and, it because those who worked were consequently being “done” by those who did not work. It was the' relations that existed between those people who lived by rendering service and those people who lived by virtue of services rendered by others, that gave occasion for the creating of labour organisation. In thisf country there could not be more than ten thousand people who did not earn their own living—men who, because of special privileges which they enjoyed, special powers which they possessed, had no need to work for their living. And the lecturer interpolated that it did not matter whether these powers ‘had been inherited, or had been thieved by honest hard work, or had been obtained by subterfuge and trickery, the relations of these men to the community were identical. Against these tefi thousand privileged , men, there were .at least half a million men and women in Now Zealand to-day who, if they stopped working very long, would stop living very soon-^m0n,.,.. arid’ jwomen whose relation to the whole problem of life was one of rendering service. There were things ! ih; this country vyliicli made it possible ’fbi' 1 some 1 pcrJpje; to live at the expense ; df others’/ jsome people got ndtldh|; 1 for SbiMtljiing : which'nfecdsisdrily involved getting something for tiotlMg. j , Jn this lay serious consequences. '

UNIMPROVED LAND VALUES

Mr ?.Ii 11s went on to say that New Zealand was a new country, which had undertaken more progressive [measures than had any other country ill the world. It had done more ip the dirdcKi'cni' of public'MAiership and ,public management countries, yet side by side wifi) all these things, there was the fact .that tl\e selling price of land was. higher in Zealand in proportion "to the. population it supported than in any other, country in the world. No other land in the life of our race with half a century of occupation and development had done so much to create a selling price so high in proportion to the number of people existing in the It was here that serious problems arose. The speaker stated that the great majority of New Zealand’s workers were workers on the land. Of 107,000 farm laborers 57,000 workers had not a single interest in the land on which they worked, and of the remainder not more than 7000 had any claim to the increasing land values. What did those increasing land values amount to? Mr Mills quoted figures to show that during the last nine or ton years previous to ) last year, the increase in unimproved land values had been £10,000,000 per annum. Figures were published the other day, however, which showed that during the last financial year, land values had increased by £15,000,Of) oj. This meant, on a 5 per cent basis, that every man, woman and child had to pay £25 per head to make flio^e• values good. Those previous valuations must have been earning 'five per cent, or they could not have added £15,000,000 hereafter. That was the workers’ burden! Why should there he that first claim against the industry and enterprise of New Zealand ? Was it not a problem that was serious, and one that should not be winked at ?

COMPETITION AND COMBINATION. After first' 'obtaining the assent of his audience to accepting the fact that New Zealand produce sold in the English market at much the same price as it would-sell in the New Zealand market, -Mr Mills went further and asked why it was that If nglish prodr.ee sold’in New Zealand at from 'ifi to four hundred per cent; more ih.in that same produce could he sold in the Old Country. Humorously, ho remarked that it was not going --->-Bill one way and down-hill the other it was soa-tevel all the way. | lit , demonstrating the repson why j Lend m produce did not sell as cheap-, ]•- here as it does in England. Mr Mhls showed that while competition puslmd the prices down in London, comhillation pushed- the prices up tl s end of the section. He made a rr id survey of all the charges that had la he made for transit of our export.- and transit of our imports, anf ] he showed that these charrys were the same in every respect.

Tariffs were not the same, London being a free port, but the great difference after all lay in the fact that where there was competition of' all nations in London, in New Zealand there was a commercial monopoly, a great trade combination, which took a huge unearned “rake-off.” Thus they had land monopoly in New Zealand, and commercial monopoly outside New Zealand—all combining to bleed the country. Mr Mills claimed that there were not ten thousand people in New Zealand that profited by this process, on the other hand there were half a million people who were the victims of this monopoly. THE POLITICAL MACHINE.

Referring to the Massey Government, the speaker said he was not particularly interested whether Mr Massey stayed in or not; he did not care who administered the machinery, but lie was keenly interested in what kind of a machine was to be administered, • What concerned him was what should be done if Massey went out, or what ought to be done if Massey stayed in, As to what the Massey Government had done, he claimed that they had done nothing to solve the problem of land monopoly. Every single measure’ they had; put forward was on behalf of ten thousand beneficiaries, and ‘not in a single instanfce bn behalf of the 1 half-mjllion Victim's i'bf' inbiibpolyt" l! The speaker outlined’the prograramb of the United Labour piirty, bird 1 said' Unit tile jwoid “syndicalist” had been flung at them by the Employers’ Federation, and others. He explained that syndicalists* "advocated "the grouping'"of* the various trades along the lines oi the industry on which they were employed, but this was advocated by all the 1 labour organisations ■'throughout the widfe world. In no Other respebt did the programme of the’ United Labour party agree with syndicalistic doctrine. Again'/ they had been nailed “socialists.” Air Mills stated that for the last twenty years every porgreissive measure that bad- been placed on the Statute Book was a socialistic measure. He 'would go further, and say that no one could name a measure that would benefit the community, which was not a socialistic measure. He claimed that the antisocialism of Mr Massey was the keeping on the Statutes the very measures that the party had previously denounced as socialistic. An interesting portion of the address was that in which Mr Mills explained the attitude of the Labour party towards strikes, and lie expounded an elaborate scheme by which before a strike could be declared, the sanction would have to be ob tallied of a series of controlling bodies. Only .when a dispute had run the whole gauntlet and had justified itself at each step, was it possible to strike.

At the conclusion of his address, ~nd having answered several questions, Mr Mills, on the motion of Mt C. If Sole, was accorded a very heart} vote of thanks.