The Daily News. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 1916. THE LABOR PROBLEM.

Taranaki Daily News, 30 November 1916, Page 4

The Daily News. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 1916. THE LABOR PROBLEM.

Those who have taken the trouble to study the evolution of labor cannot fail to have been struck with the fact that it has followed a natural law, although by a misuse of terms it might be said to be an unnatural law. The subject is far too involved to unravel, in a brief comment, its many ramifications, hut the great outstanding features are the influences emanating from education, organisation and srofestional agitation,

Each of these factors Ims contributed it.s share to the growth of the labor movement, and -jolleetively brought about the acquisition of a power that threatens to be dangerous, if not disastrous, to national development and peace. Labor in the abstract very elo.-,ely resembles tire in its power for good or evil. Properly controlled and used with intelligence it can accomplish marvellous benefits for the human race, but if allowed to get out of hand, or, more correctly speaking, the upper hand, it becomes a destructive instead of a constructive force. We heard much talk in the old days of the emancipation of labor, the dignity of labor and the rights of labor—all excellent in their W!ty, but what do we find today? Take the subject of emancipation. Labor is glorying in its newly-found freedom. It can down tools at any moment and stop the working of the national machinery. It ean accumulate funds to keep the wolf of hunger from the door while the rest of the community are starved into submission. Worst of all, it can, at the most crucial time in national history, jeopardise the very existence of a country by striken and ''go slow" tactics which,lf persisted in, would render the nation an easy prey to remorseless enemies and make the workers slaves to ruthless tyrants, thus bringing about a punishment that though merited is utterly unthinkable. As labor translates emancipation, it means freedom for the workers and the enslavement to their will of all other members of the community. Instead of being sufficiently far-seeing to encourage industrial development and inducing capitalists to extend operations profitable alike to employers and employees, labor's policy has been and is governed by the false and disastrous idea that capital is unworthy of consideration and that the interests of labor are supreme, forgetting that the very essence of progress and prosperity is the co-operation between the two forces, neither being able to stand alone. Labor abhors what is termed ''sweating," and rightly so, mid yet when the British Empire is engaged in a life-and-dcath straggle with a Power that has been persistently un-der-selling manufactures, thereby curtailing enormously the opportunities of earning of the British workers, the latter havs become so blinded to their own interests and safety of the Empire that they regard the nation's danger as their opportunity for showing their power. How the Huns must have gloated over such a.: exnibition of traitorous selfishness! What dignity is there in such conduct? Dignity is worthiness, and l.iboi by the tactics it is now employing is forfeiting ail claim to worthiness. Labor has its rights, and all sane people recognise thai honest laboi is the fulcrum of a nation's power and progress W'e gladly recognise the rights and dignity of labor when they are in evidence, just as we abhor the tiiotici of the Red feds. Those, who road, in yesterday's issue, the very interesting and able comments of the P.ev. Frederick Stubbs on labor in Australia, will have obtained some conception of the difficulties presented in solving the labor problem. Taking the most favorable view of the present position it can only be said chat labor is in an unhealthy condition. The lault is not so much attributable to the mass of the workers as to those agitators who exist by the degrading business of stirring up strife. It seems almost impossible that since the w;ir started there should have been live hundred strikes in Australia, yet the fact is vouched for, and it is sorry lic-ws. There have beer, serious wharf i strikes, disastrous disputes in the sugar industry, threatening its very existence; constantly recurring strikes at Broken Hill, and now a more determined and obstinate struggle by the miners. To what end? Millions of pounds lost tc the country, and the creation of a yeasty atmosphere that fosters laying down tools on the slightest pretext, and where that will not be effective, resort is had to the iniquitous "go slow" tac- . ties, which reduce the workers to a slavery ten times worse than any they have ever experienced. In Australia, labor has become dominant, with the lesult that there is a growing tendency towards doing as little work as possible and demanding as much pay as they dare. That i s why the outcry for nationalisation of industry has become insistent. The men do. not stop to think for a moment or they would sec that it is the employee and not the employer who must in the long run sulVer by the high-handed methods now in use, for the purchasing power of wages becomes automatically reduced by the increased cost of production and of the necessaries of life. There could be no surer means devised for playing into the hands of the Oermans than those now adopted by labor. If the men saved some of their high wages an<_ vested them in industrial enterprises they would at once see the folly of their present hostility to capital, but they are blind to everything but the lust of domination, and that can surely end in noIhing but disaster. If unionism is to do any good it must be regenerated on sane lines. It has illimitable power for advancing the best interests tif the workers, but is far 100 busy grasping at the shadow and losing the substance. Labor/ needs organising on sound, healthy lines, or the day will come when :t will lose all, and possibly mere, than it has gained by many years of bitter struggle.