THE LAST KICKS.

Observer, Volume XXXIII, Issue 4, 5 October 1912, Page 2

THE LAST KICKS.

Obsequies Drawing Nearer.

THE Eed Federation has intimated, that it is willing to engage in the noble occupation of doing' nothing on the other fellow's money for ten years if necessary. It will be an agreeable diversion for the man who is called upon to buy bread for his heroic pauper relative who disdains; work on principle and because a few Waihi winders have been stubborn enough to desire toearn a living by the work of their own hands. There are, however, very clearly read indications that people , who engage in the nefarious business of earning wages are becoming tired of being a charitable organisation. The Red Federation has had a remarkable innings for so small and loud an or T ganisation. Its threat to call a general strike was tantamount to the action of a babbling infant who promises Bruiser Johnson a sound thrashing. A few men here and there who , believe that perennial idleness and support from the man who toils is due to their heroism still persist that they will fight for a principle to the bitter end.

The Bed Federation, surprised beyond measure that nobody now takes it seriously, before it gives its final kick, makes a further bid for idleness by raising strike pay. or in other words taxing genuine toilers' earnings to feed idlers , stomachs. It is claimed in some remarkable way that the "" heroes " who are sticking out are the prince of toilers, but it may be laid down as a general principle that no man who is a genuine and competent worker will consent to' rust even if a section of tired toilers regard him as a hero for sitting with folded hands, while the world is calling aloud for'men to do its business. In asking the people to believe that the nefarious methods of the I.W.W. are admirable, the Federation also assumes that any falsehood likely to influence a continuance of idleness iff permissible.

The Federation invents an apparently circumstantial story to the effect that the Government intends to introduce coloured African labour to man New Zealand mines. Anything so absolutely antagonistic to the wholespirit of the Government and the people, could hardly be conceived, and it is almost a pity that so outrageous a misstatement should have to be denied by the Government and the men who control the Waihi mines. It may perhaps aid the " stalwarts " whopersist in the heroism of doing nothing at their working victims , extent, in a return to sanity, for there can be no doubt, that in a case where there isno cause of quarrel with employers or wages, that the phase is simply a mental disturbance. The leaders of these periodical disturbances are mereemotionalists, the peculiar bent of whose minds distorts facts believing perhaps in the truth of their statements and wondering, why all human minds are not similarly distorted. On the one hand, there have been the insanities of the Federation, calculated toforce reprisals from the employers. On the other hand, the detached, uncritical and admirable sanity of the Waihi management, which .has accepted the position with the utmost philosophy and which has never at any moment shown bias in the fight.

The blatant, self-satisfied and intensely selfish operations of the Federation have been the more useful the more blatant they have become. The Federation's inability to coerce NewZealand and to effect a commercial panic in the country has had the effect of placing the organisation in its true perspective. It believed it was an eagle. On close examination, it turns out to be a crow—loud enough in all -conscience, but not the soaring bird it imagined itself to be. The average citizen is' entitled to believe that the cycle of destructive emotionalism that has surged across the world is dying down because of the proved futility, of quarrels about petty matters. While it is admirable and

* -necessary that organised labour (as distinct from organised idleness) should obtain every possible redress where wrong exists, it is discreditable that .any mass of sane citizens, having no essential quarrel with. their employ, .should be led by a few destructive emotionalists who have no power to .aid workers in any upward movement, and the history of whose work is the "history of victimisation of those they affect to help. There is now no possibility of the continued existence of -nefarious and destructive organisations and the people of New Zealand will emit a sigh of relief when they at last gaze on the tombstone of the Red Tederation and wonder why it was and why it didn't die sooner.