Liberal combination, the telegraph operator, now became Prime Minister, slips over to Great Britain a present of a Dreadnaught battleship, taxes every man, woman and child in the country ten dollars to pay for the gift, and then parades England in the glory of his achievement. Meantime the condition of the workingman, absolutely and relatively, is worse than it has ever been; the government placed in power and held there by workingmen's votes gives to them such treatment as you would expect from a member of the National Manufacturers' Association; and a man that preaches the social revolution among them is looked upon as a strange, weird beast. What do we want of a social revolution? There is an election next year, and if you talk like that you may injure the chances of our candidate. People are not ready for that sort of thing, you know, and we must be practical.
Practical—that is a good word, especially in New Zealand. In that country striking has been made practically a crime; a man that engages in a strike (except under the impossible conditions laid down by the government) can be thrown into jail for that mere act alone. This is the express and practical provision of the statute and there is no protest against it from the working class.
In New Zealand the government operates a coal mine, wherein it exploits its workers and extorts from them more labor than private mine owners get; and the working class makes no protest against that.
Men have engaged in a just and necessary strike, and to punish them their homes have been invaded and the sewing machines and little personal belongings of their wives have been seized and confiscated; and the working class accepts that.
The system of compulsory arbitration is now being worked by the capitalist class to keep down wages in a country where the cost of living rapidly increases; and the working class endures that.
