Labour Movement: Active but [unclear: Chaotic]

When we survey the industrial [unclear: fi] we find confusion worse [unclear: confoun] Everywhere throughout the [unclear: civili] world we find the Labour [unclear: moveme] active but chaotic. Unrest, anarchy, [unclear: a] chaos are apparent in every land. [unclear: R] here, in God's Own Country, we [unclear: h] the most revolutionary and [unclear: anarchi] doctrines being promulgated at [unclear: str] corners by I.W.W. orators, and [unclear: being] page 3 disseminated through the country by means of pamphlets and newspapers. In their anxiety to redress undoubted grievances, these propagandists seem to have lost all sense of "right" and "wrong." Indeed, they glory in that fact. One of the leading writers of the I.W.W. movement, Mr. St. John, in a pamphlet entitled, "The I.W.W.: Its History, Structure, and Methods," under the heading "I.W.W. Tactics and Methods," declares that: "As a revolutionary organisation, the Industrial Workers of the World aims to use any and all tactics that will get the results sought with the least expenditure of time and energy. The tactics used are determined solely by the power of the organisation to make good in their use. The question of 'right' and 'wrong' does not concern us."

What the "results sought" are, is not made very plain—unless by the vague phrase, "the overthrow of the capitalist system!" To secure this result any means appear to be considered justifiable. And the experience of New Zealand seems to be that any means are held to be preferable to the constitutional method of altering, by the representatives of the people elected at the ballot box, the laws that affect the distribution of the products of labour. The practice of sabotage, striking, or loafing on the job, the burning of crops and barns, as well as the sympathetic or general strike, are openly suggested in the propaganda of the I.W.W. as means of getting the "results sought" with the least expenditure of time and energy. One can understand the advocacy of such means in a country under the control of an autocratic government where the people are rigorously excluded from any real share in the government, but surely in a democratic country like New Zealand, where every man and every woman has one vote, and one vote only, the advocates of such a gospel must be in need of mental treatment.

Recent events in New Zealand have revealed the fact that even in this country, with all its experimental labour legislation, there is a considerable and energetic section of workers whose minds are very chaotic regarding the cause and the cure of labour's wrongs.