Wairarapa Daily Times [Established 50 Years.] MONDAY, MARCH 30, 1925. UNIONISM’S REAL MENACE.

Wairarapa Daily Times, 30 March 1925, Page 4

Wairarapa Daily Times [Established 50 Years.] MONDAY, MARCH 30, 1925. UNIONISM’S REAL MENACE.

A few year 9 ago there was a fairly large output of American liction dealing with the methods of the political “boss.” In many of the books he was depicted as one who, for purposes of demonstration, carried on a public war against his political foemen, the while he was in the habit of meeting those persons in private to arrange the affairs of his county, State or nation—and divide the spoils. The principle has been proved capable of wide application, with modifications to suit time and circumstance. Beating the air to convey false impressions is a device perhaps as old as man himself. If instead of air one can lash out at a supposed concrete enemy, and thus divert attention from his own serious activities, the method becomes the more effectively useful—or mischievous. We are not infrequently told that certain action taken by employers who are attacked by militant trades unionism is part of a scheme to break down that unionism. The action may be the inevitable consequences of union policy; but if it can be made to appear as something gratuitously directed against the principle of tho organisation of employees there is always a readiness to give it that interpretation. Those who are most facile in the art of camouflage of that sort are probably among the most effective instruments in use for the purpose of. achieving the end which others are falsely charged with desiring to bring about. They are, too, usually quite frank about it in a general way. They boast of their success in “white anting” trades unionism, for example. They tell of how an organisation nominally existing only for furthering the trade interests of a craft is really an agency for the spread of Communistic propaganda, and is either officered largely by Communists or otherwise dominated by them. When it suits them they will, of course, deny anything and everything. Truth, the bargain made, the confidence of a friend or acquaintance, are all repudiated with the utmost readiness. What the “spieler” of the showground or the racecourse is in his domain, the political confidence man is in trades union and party politics—the embodiment of deception and fraud. It would be futile to deny that chicanery of a sort is not confined to one section of political activity. But in other sections, when it is practised, the thing is done furtively. Discovery means loss of prestige and place—ruination. The nominal ideal is high. One pretends to aspire to it, even if in fact his aim is much lower. In the other section the facts are inverted. Men in it are not ashamed to be caught doing shameful and despicable things, provPlcd they can invest them with industr’al or political significance. They are not spurned by their fellows, but rewarded by gifts of office and the like.