LET THE TRUTH PREVAIL.

Wanganui Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 16034, 27 January 1920, Page 5

LET THE TRUTH PREVAIL.

To the Editor.

Sir,—Many centuries ago the Gallilean Peasant uttered these words;— “The truth shall make you free.” I am one of those, Sir, who believe that untimately the truth is going to free the industrial slave from his and her bondage. In your issue of even date (Monday) your Wellington correspondent has an article under the caption, “The Labour Problem,’’ And I may say at the outset that I often wish the men who sit in office chairs and write up articles on the labour question would just take a spell for three months or so, say on the wharves, in the gasworks, in the mines, and so on around the practical side of work. Robert Blatchford once went clown into a coal mine, and after a good inspection he put the query; “How much do those men earn per week?” The reply was, “£2,” and Blatchford’s reply came, “I wonder that you get men to go down at all.” It is simply amazing the knowledge your Wellington correspondent has of the industrial situation. In his remarks on “the workers’ attitude,” he says, “he (the worker) honestly believes the capitalists are treating him badly, and the newspapers habitually misrepresenting him.” The worker is quite justified in that attitude, and he well knows, at the end of the week’s toil, he hasn’t received a fair share of what he helped to produce. And is it any wonder that he believes he is misrepresented by the Press Your own Wellington correspondent misreported the facts relating to a meeting held by Mr Holland, M.P., at the beginning of this year. We were told that Mr Holland had a sparse attendance, and that lie poured forth hitter invective against some politicians. But I happen to know that Mr Holland had an attendance of 1000 people, and that he didn’t pour out one word of bitter invective. And my informant was a Reformer who happened to be present at Holland’s meeting. And then your correspondent speaks of the average worker as being only a private in the industrial army, and draws the inference that the mass of workers are the tools of an industrial bureaucracy. Not one little bit of it, Sir! The workers in this country have the opportunity of changing their leaders at least once a year, hut our Parliamentary bureaucrats , robbed us of the opportunity of changing Parliament for five years. One would imagine, according to newspaper talk, that the workers of this country are like “dumb, driven cattle.” No, the truth is that, according to the Press, Labour will never get the right lenders unless they are “made to order” from the chairs of the Press of this Dominion. Small wonder that the intelligent worker reads His newspaper very sceptically. He’s been had too many times. Take Russia, for example ! In spite of capitalistic manoeuvring, the truth is reaching us in this part of the world, and apparently they’re not getting on so-badly after all. Yes, whether we like it or not, we must accept the new order of things, and we shall be wise if we endeavour to assist, and not retard, the down of a new era for the toiling makses of the world. We stand to-day-in the birth chamber of a new order of things, and we to that man, or men who endeavour to strangle the birth