LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
LABOUR UNREST.
[To TRY EDITOR 07 TRY " SPZCIATOR.1
Sra,—In your footnote to " Z's " letter on the above last week you say you would welcome any suggestion for a careful diagnosis of hooliganism. Will you allow the suggestion that labour unrest and hooliganism are simply the inevitable and natural result of the way in which the politician in every country has been humbugging the voters P A generation ago we were taught that if we worked hard we should get on, and that short cuts to wealth were dangerous and delusive. To-day the politician changes all this and says : "vote for me and I will give you something for nothing." The people vote for the said politician and the " something for nothing" is so long in coming that the people, cozened and bemused with promises, get exasperated and impatient. This exasperation is most natural and excusable, and may largely, if not entirely, explain labour unrest and hooli- ganism. Gradually but surely the fact is being brought home to the people that they have been very badly deceived. No wonder they strike out blindly; but there are signs that inexorable economic and natural laws are forcing themselves to the front, and will once again be recognized as inevitable
The people will no longer be deceived, and the demagogue who has been promising "something for nothing " will be sent to the right about, and will fall, as all demagogues do fall in the end, at the bands of the very people who put him in power. There is a moral to be drawn here. The Radicals say they will make the rich man pay the poor man's taxes. Some Conservatives say they will make the foreigner pay. Both of these are insidious and Socialistic delusions. The Radical illusion is being rapidly dispelled. Let the Conservatives draw the moral : Don't promise too much.
The Budget of 1909 was to bestow rare and refreshing fruit on the parched multitude. The multitude does not seem very grateful, does it? No, the people feel that they have been had, and they see that the ever-growing army of new officials are about the only people who have benefited by the Budget. Speaking of the Insurance Bill lately, two or three of the more intelligent labour leaders have declared that both the workman's and employer's contributions will come out of the Wages Fund! Why, of course they will, and so do old-age pensions and other social reforms. There is so much money for taxes and so much for wages, and the higher the taxes the lower the wages. " Social Reform " can be spelt in five letters —T-A-X- E-S. An increase of £20,000,000 a year hasbeenlevied in taxes for " Social Reform," and then the people wonder that advances in wages are not forthcoming. Wages are practically stationary, the cost of living goes up, and the Government is trying to persuade the people that it can spend the people's money better than the people can spend it themselves.
Speaking about the recent railway strike and outburst of violence at Seven Sisters, Neath, the Chancellor of the Ex- chequer made one of the most amazing of his many attacks on property. He denounced those who had large sums of money invested, and who bad no apparent occupation, and finished up by saying that, so long as you have such contrasts between poverty and wealth, " so long will you have these outbursts." In other words : " If you help yourselves to other people's property I for one shall not blame you very much." A man with £100 a week talking like this to people who have, probably, nearer £1 a week incurs a frightful re- sponsibility, and will sooner or later be exposed as nothing but a demagogue who, in his turn, will be told, "Either stop talk- ing like that or divide up." Truly has it been said that the Chancellor speaks with two voices—one for the mob and one for the House of Commons. He hints to the mob that there are people who are rich and they are poor, and that he for one can quite excuse an "outburst." When the " outburst " comes his Government shoots the mob. Why, under these circum- stances, should your correspondent " Z " wonder at labour unrest and hooliganism ?
The exasperation and violence seem to be under the circum- stances the most natural, if not excusable, thing in the world ; and as for the workers breaking their bargains with their employers, are they so much worse than the various Govern- ments of Europe or, indeed, of the world ? Does not every (civilized ?) Government just keep every treaty just as long as it suits it and not five minutes longer ? Are not labour unrest and hooliganism the natural products of the dishonesty of the politician who raises false hopes and the Governments which set him such bad examples ?
Possibly my attempted diagnosis will not be accepted by " Z," and it is likely that some other correspondent will be able to explain much better the phenomena of labour unrest.
—I am, Sir, &c., E. L. OLIVER. The Waterhouse, Bollington, Macclesfield.
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