CAUSE OF UNREST.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 16608, 4 December 1919, Page 3

CAUSE OF UNREST.

HIGHER WAGES. HIGHER PlUditS. WAY OCT OF PERSONAL TROUBLES. In an interview with a representative of the Daily Ouromcic, Air. C. A. AF Curdy, K.C., M.P., Parliamentary Secretary U> the food Ministry, expresses tho view that tho causes of unrest among workers generally are partly political and partly economic.

“How far,” asked tho interviewer, “do you connect the strikes with revoI iuliouary propaganda ?” "Not a man in a hundred of our strikers at home,” said Mr. M’Curdy, {“knows anything, or cares to know anything, about the philosophy of anarchism or syndicalism. He is looking for a way out of his own personal troubles—high prices, the irritation of profiteering, tho limited share he gets of the comforts of life. “By some disruptionist propagandist ho is told that a strike for higher wages will balance his budget and enable him to get even with the profiteer. It does not occur to him taut by striking just now, ho makes it more difficult than ever for law to get what lie wants from the Government, from his employers, or from tho trading community.” , “If a truce to ail strikes were called, how would tho workers faro?" “That is tho first necessity, hut it is not enough. They do not ..need an increase of wages, but an increase jof things that wages can buy. Ip--1 creased wages, if there be no additional production, must lie follow'ed by 1 increased prices. Wo want more I houses, more clothes, more furniture, more of everything that is used by the working classes. “When the workers have made these ; things, they must set themselves to j discover whether the money wage, : translated into terms of the commqdi- ' ties they require, gives them their fair | share of tho wealth produced. If not, j they can then strike with some reason, i but certainly not before they have increased that wealth.” 1 “Do you connect the British strike S epidemic with the Continental _ move- | ments —with tho Soviet experiments, for instance?” ...

“The advocates of in this country,” was Mr. M'Cnrdy s reply, “could not possibly manifest such sympathy as they do with the Bolshevik regime if they at heart abhorred the violence by means of which Bolshevism maintains its authority. Tin's gospel has been preached in Jturopc for years by Bakunin, Sorel, Johann Most. and_ others., and, consciously or unconsciously—-mainly consciously—the direct action ists and the advocates of unlimited strikes deuyo their inspiration from the extremist doctrines that are now being put into practice in Russia. • , . . “Neither strikes nor brutal deeds can alter the economic law that higher wages load to higher prices. The Bolsheviks by violence could destroy the Tsar and his family; they could not, with all their violence, give the Russian people bread.”