DAY BY DAY.

Waikato Times, Volume 100, Issue 16800, 19 May 1926, Page 6

DAY BY DAY.

—4 When the British seamen’s strike collapsed in Melbourne

An Autocrat of Labour.

it was a familiar tiling to see squads of sheeplike mallows with bundles in their banns

being marched through the streets to the railway station to bo re-embarked on their ships (says a Sydney paper). Shepherding the flock or herd was a square-faced man with an air of profound contempt for tlie army painstakingly goose-stepping before him. Outside llie station the docile mob would he drawn up,, harangued on solidarity by the Napolconic-looking person, invited to sing “The Hed Flag" (by way of recompense for having gone short of tucker for eleven weeks, and condemned their womenfolk lo go shorter), and I lion driven llirougli the gales, much as jumbueks arc pushed out into the fields after having had their coats removed by Die shearers. The leader with I lie Prussian touch was O. O’.Veill, secretary of the Victorian branch of Ihr Seamen’s Pnion, who lias just pul his dream of power iu conrrrle shape in a rrporl lo his organisa'lioii. “The immediate inaugural ion of a deserve Strike Fund, supported hy I iuveriinieiil subsidy,” says llie U'Ncill, “is so essential Unit legislation lo i! must he placed Upon llie Slalute. book. With five l.ahoiir i tovernmenls in power, no cason eaii be advanced why sneti a measure should nol lie, iiilroihieed." 'l’lien lie visualises huge barracks, large enough to aceomniodale the. taillitul herd, huilt also, presmnably. by Coverniip’iil, subsidy: likewise strike levies enforced by law and swollen by money from the public rolTers. Paranoia is a form of nervous deraiigemenl complicated by delusions of grandeur. ii'.Veill’s taste of power over a small number of deceived and badgered British sailors seems lo have gone to bis brain.