PUBLIC OPINION.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 9253, 4 June 1908, Page 1

PUBLIC OPINION.

« FROM YESTERDAY'S NEWSPAPERS. - (By Telegraph.) THE "STANDARD" ENTERPRISE. One would imagine from the various J references to this new departure that the duty of all newspapers is to work for everybody for nothing without any thought whatever of any pecuniary or other advantage. On no other hypothesis can the use made of the " Standard "be regarded as a crime. The real crime, we fear, is the care which is being taken to assure other things getting to London but strikes and rumours of strikes, and trivialities without interest. It has been the common talk of travelled colonists that this colony seems to be desperately ignored by the English newspapers, and only mentioned to be misrepresented. It is ' our pleasure to inform New Zealanders i at first hand that this is to be altered. The service which the "Standard 5 . 5 will receive weekly for its Empire edition will be adequate and quite reliable.—"'New Zealand Times. 55 LABOUR LEADERS. Labour politics are based upon personal views. The unionist moves continually in his own interest. The secretary or organiser or leader must head the movement or be trodden under. Naturally, he dislikes to be trodden under much. He prefers to increase his power and emolument, and who can blame him? Thus the prosperity of labour organisations almost inevitably means a Labour Party in politics. Whether the intrusion will be profitable or not it is forced upon labour leaders by the law of their being. They must foster discontent in order to thrive, and often the discontent is beneficial to the community I .—" Evening Post." ARBITRATION COURT FINES. We cannot agree with the proposal of the Minister f«r.J^abour to. compel employers to collect Arbitration Court fines by retaining 20 per cent of the defaulting workman's wages. " This appears hardly less objectionable than the quite impracticable proposition of the Attorney-General that no employers should be allowed to employ a workman who was under the ban of an unpaid fine. It is not fair to employers, nor calculated to strengthen the kindly sympathy between employers and employed, so necessary to industrial peace, to make an Arbitration Court bailiff of any employer. The Arbitration Court ought to collect its fines from individuals by ordinary process of law, but it might well strengthen its authority over defaulting recalcitrant unions by suspending all " preference to unionists " for a term of years wherever unions had defied the law under which " preference 55 had been granted to them.—" New Zealand Herald." SOCIALISM IN THEORY AND PRACTICE. We are often told that the objections raised .against socialism are purely theoretical, and that the difficulties would vanish if only an attempt were made to deal with .them practically. The experience of Brest certainly does not bear out these sanguine expectations. In this typical case we have an exposition of nearly all the defects characteristic of collectivism. The assumption that any kind of socialism will make all people more contented or public-spirited, or unselfish, or tolerant than they were before, that it will enable inexperienced and incompetent men to administer successfully vast public interests, or organise profitably huge industrial enterprises, that the public treasury is an inexhaustible fund from which endless supplies can be drawn without imposing corresponding burdens upon the taxpayers, that philanthropic schemes can be carried out by a socialist state or a collectivist municipality without any reference to the sordid details of finance — these fallacies, we say, are fundamental to all collect\yist theory and every scheme of socialism that has yet been attempted in a practical way. — Auckland "Star.' 5