FOREIGN LABOUR MOVEMENTS.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XV, Issue 887, 7 March 1907, Page 22

FOREIGN LABOUR MOVEMENTS.

The Labour party in the United States, says Engineering, has inaugurated a new departure, following the example of the Labour party in Britain. In the United States the new movement is led by the American Federation of Labour, the greatest convention ever held—at Minnesota. The creation of a Labour party is now an accomplished fact. It stands apart from the Republicans and Democrats, though there may be representatives of both in the new group. To their Bill of Rights, called by them a “Manifesto of Grievances,” they have now definitely added the abolition of all child labour under 14 years of age. This subject has been taken up by the American women, and a high-class weekly paper is devoted to it. The manufacturers complain of a scarcity of labour, and seek to fix the age at 12 years instead of 14. The labour movement has spread’ to Canada but not to the same extent or with the same enthusiasm. The idea is to carry the industrial war throughout the great American continent from Canada to San Francisco, and also through the Central American States. British employers and workmen need not be alarmed at this, for the re'-ul will be more equ’table condi-

lions in the competitions for the world’s work for manufactured articles of all kinds that come into the world’s markets. The wonder is. that American, workpeople have fa len in'o the rear, for a generation ago heir position and condition were held up as examp es to European labour. In the Austra ian Commonwealth, and in New Zealand, labour has, continues Engineering, long been striving to become the dominant factor in public life. Now they form a third party in the Comonwealth, but with diverse elements which may at any time split, over, say, the fiscal question —protection versus free trade—-and also probably over the question of State employment and protective labour. Cohesion is unstable, and the Labour party may at any time split, and the severed sections join one or the other of the . old parties so long dominant in Australian politics. Russia. Engineering goes on to say, has long been seething with discontent and revol . The labour question has been merged into the political ,but the situation has not improved. Workless dis-'cntents, enraged by hunger, have joined the revolutionary bands, the result being assasinations and attempted assassinations, sham trials, and. Siberia. In Germany the Socialists are engaged in a struggle . with the Crown and Court,

brought about by a side issue; but the fight will be on the question of the condition of the working people. In Spain and Italy the proletariat have been fighting for better conditions, but 'the struggle has been less sanguinary than in Russia. In France, Belgium, and Austria-Hungary the struggles have been less acute, but everywhere the struggle of labour is manifest. In the midst of all there has been and is, commercial prosperity; but the workers think that their share is small in its proportion to the whole.