SHOOT THE CAPITALIST.

Observer, Volume XXVII, Issue 38, 8 June 1907, Page 2

SHOOT THE CAPITALIST.

The New Labour Propaganda,

THE deliverances of that aggressive organisation known as tbe Auckland Trades and l abour Council and presided over by Mr Herbert Brookes, are not taken very seriously by the working man of the community. It is recognised that the society is chiefly composed of walking delegates, and other individuals who aspire to become walking delegates, and, if the sentiments expressed at the meetings are occasionally extravagant and revolutionary, nobody in particular is moved to uneasiness or alarm. The revolutionary sentiment is part of the game. It assists the speaker to attain notoriety, which is essential to the successful walking delegate, and it costs no more than common sense. Therefore, the working man is not in any way responsible for the vagaries of the Trades and Labour Council.

Neither can he in any way be regarded as having any sympathy with the walking delegate or his revolutionary propaganda. Under the system of preference to unionists, the walking delegate is tbe political boss. The working man is compelled to join the trades union, and subscribe to the maintenance of the walking delegate, whether he sympathises with the system of close trade corporations or not. The law and necessity make of him a slave or a bondsman to his labour boss, who is the walking delegate, arrogating to himself the right to be the sole mouth-piece of the silenced working man.

Occasionally, some remarkable revolutionary clap-trap is talked at che meetings of the Trades and Labour Council. For example, Mr Pratt is reported as having said one night last week thati every workman should be supplied with a gun and ammunition with which to shoot the capitalists. This is not necessarily the sentiment of the working man, bat rather the individual opinion of Mr Pratt and others of like kidney on the Trades and Labour Council. But, taking Mr Pratt at his word, why not 1 The Government has placed in the hands of the trades unionist nearly every weapon that human ingenuity could conceive to destroy the capitalist without bloodshed. Why stop at bloodshed? Why not wipe out the capitalist, who in New Zealand is generally the employer, altogether ?

It is only a short step from the present state of the labour law to the complete annihilation of the employer. Why should the Government hesitate to take it? There are guns and ammunition in plenty in the country. Why not serve them oat to the working men, with free shooting licenses entitling them to wipe out the employers root and branch ? It can scarcely be argued that the employer has any rights of remonstrance, or even the right of protection that is supposed to be enjoyed by every citizen. Why bother about guns and ammunition at all ? Why not set up tbe guillotine and

revive the terrors of the French Revolution, sacrificing the employers of today as the old nobility of France were sacrificed a century ago. Our revolutionaries ought to find a capable leader in Mr Pratt.

But granting that Mr Pratt's plan were carried into effect, and the country were rid of the employers and what the Hon. W. P. Reeveß was once pleased to call the social pests, what would the working men do without them ? Would Mr Pratt and his associates of the Trades and Labour Council find employment for the working men ? Has it ever occurred to the revolutionaries of the community to consider what would become of the working men if the factories and other industries of the community were shut down even for three months? Labour in this young country is dependent upon capital just as much as capital is dependent upon labour, and one cannot prosper without the other. The intelligent working man fully realises this fact, but then he is not the walking delegate.