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Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 75, 5 May 1914, Page 6

Another congress '' for the purpose of solidifying the forces of Labour in order to more successfully protect the mutual interests of organised Labour" (according to the phrasing of P. H. Hiekey, secretary-treasurer of the Federation of Labour) is projected, ostensibly for the unification of the different classes of Labour. The appeal —a fairly lengthy document, which we published yesterday—has been sent to unions throughout the Dominion. Already one influential union (the Westport Watersiders) has turned down the invitation, and attached to its refusal some very pertinent comment. "A federation that stands for destruction and not construction, that spreads disunity rather than unity, whose most effective w r eapon: is intimidation and abuse should be, in our opinion, considered only as a memory of the bitter past,'".is ..the unchristian retort of the Westport watersiders, an opinion which will be endorsed by many other unions in New Zealand. If any protection is needed for organised Labour it is from its common enemy, the Syndicalists, who during their last desperate effort against Capital (and the general public) made it clear that they would not hesitate to sacrifice honourable Labour and all its hope of eternal life to achieve an ephemeral notoriety. The workers who decline to fall into line with industrial anarchy have all the protection they can reasonably expect from the Legislature, at the back of which is a sympathetic public. They have come to see, thanks to the unhappy - methods of the Syndicalists themselves, that their arch enemy is the destructive Socialism which has been propounded without stint since the miners adopted it. 'There was a time when the Federation promised to gain most of its desires, but that time is past. * The clamorous and - expensive congress last year brought forth \ no tangible advantage, and, with the | strike in between, there can be no hope whatever for the gathering the Federation has in mind. The Syndicalist gods could not forever hide their feet of clay. Their old lure has staled.