PROFESSIONAL AGITATORS.

Observer, Volume 7, Issue 347, 1 August 1885, Page 3

PROFESSIONAL AGITATORS.

Following the example of the unfortunates in the Southern cities the Auckland unemployed have recently attempted to get up meetings and arouse public attention to their condition ; but these meetings have not made one half the stir that they excited in Dunedin or Christchurch, doubtless because things^acfi not one half so bad here in Auckland as they are in the South. Of course Auckland has its proportion of unemployed ; just at this dead season of the year, be the times what they may, there are. always some people who have ' got no work to do,' and who are very easily induced by the rough and ready eloquence of men of the W. E. Garrard type to magnify the hardship of their lot, and take a gloomier view of things than is warranted by the actual facts of the case. Ido not for one nionient wish it to be understood that I have no sympathy for people ready and willing to work but who cannot find work to do ; but I certainly do think that professional agitators have much to answer for in stirring up discontent, and who, while professing to do good, do harm and only make bad worse. Many of these fellows will not work when they are offered it ; they are simply agitators who are never happy without a grievance. When the writer was in Timaru some years ago several open-air meetings of the unemployed were held one winter, and all sorts of resolutions censuring the Government were passed. Deputations waited on the Mayor, petitions were drawn up and signed, paragraphs and articles appeared in the local papers, and the unemployed were unemployed no longer ; they were busied almost daily in ventilating their wrongs in some way or other, and agitating for their redress. Prominent amongst the speakers at the meetings was an individual well known in the town as possessing the ' gift of the gab,' and an unusually large share of that useful quality known as ' brass.' This man held a Government billet bringing him in about £3 a week, and this circumstance when coupled with his championship of the horny-handed, placed him in a rather anomalous position. He actually threw up his situation in order that he might be better qualified to talk about the wropgs he esteemed so dearly and abuse the Government for withholding from him the work he had abandoned. This gentleman was subsequently instrumental in forming a Working Man's Political Association, which the promoters hoped would effect great things. The clever speaker, who had thrown up his billet to join the unemployed, was unanimously elected secretary of the Association, as a slight recognition of the eminent services he had rendered to the cause. «. The secretary was unremitting in his exertions to train up the infant Association in the way it should go, displaying the most extraordinary energy in collecting the subscriptions from members. When these were all in, or nearly so, the hard-working secretary was missing one day from his post, and next day the news leaked out that he had gone away taking the subscription money with him. The Association has long since broken up, but its active and energetic secretary is -talked about to this day. He was neither •more nor less than a blatherskite, who * travelled ' on the working man, in whose loehalf he manifested such a lively interest. These are the fellows who lead the working man by the nose, and by making him gloomy and discontented do an incalculable amount of mischief wherever they happen to be located.