TRADES HALL SUBSIDY.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 10443, 24 April 1912, Page 2

TRADES HALL SUBSIDY.

+ WESTERN AUSTRALIAN MOVEMENT. LABOUR GOVERNMENT'S # GENEROSITY. United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright. (Received April 24, 10.20 a.m.) PERTH, April 24. Besides making a donation of £IOOO to tlio Trades Hall building fund, the Premier announced that- the Government was prepared to purchase the site nt si cost of £3BOO and grant the Council a perpetual lease of it, and further to consider the matter of taking up the Trades Council's overdraft at a private bnnk and lending it sufficient money to eompleto the 1 building-

The progress of the Labour movement in Western Australia during the last year has been wonderful, it oue may judge from a statement mado by Mr A. M'Callum, secretary of the Metropolitan Council of the Australian Labour Federation, at a social gathering in Perth. Referring to the progress made by his organisation during the last fourteen months, Mr M'Callum said that about fourteen months ago the. Metropolitan Council of the Federation had a membership of only 1200. It had no headquarters to call its own, and i£ had notice to quit the buildings in which it was thou quartered. To-day that body was the strongest Council in Western Australia, with a membership of over 6000. It also owned the very valuable block on which it was now completing what would be the most centrallysituated Trades Hall in Australia. The old hall—formerly a church—now at the rear of the new building would be down in a month, and it proposed to erect in its place as part of the general building it hall to accommodate over 2000 people. It hoped to have tho whole structure completed in about six months' time.