The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, December 16, 1918, Page 5

Makm the Begmmng in Australasia | The Plan to Bulld Up a New “England” of Landlord Nobility and Servants Fails—Convicts Used Against Free Citizens This is the first of a series of 10 powerful ar- ticles from the experience and pen of Walter Thomas Mills, one of the best known reform lead- ers and thinkers of the present day, on the efforts of the people of New Zealand to better their con- ditions of livelihood. Because they have long had incorporated in their laws reforms. which the spe- cial interest press in America refers to as vision- ary, impractical, “socialistic” and un-American, this series of articles will be of great interest to Leader readers. Mr. Mills will also touch some- ' what em Australia. As is necessarily the case Mr. Mills devotes most of his first article to explain how he happened te go to New Zealand and his general sources of in- formation. He was there over two years, labor- ing to help form a genuine Labor party. What he has to say, therefore, will mean more than the re- marks of a easual observcr, or one who, like a cer- tain well-known writer, stepped off the boat for a few hours only and returned to write a book on New Zealand. BY WALTER THOMAS MILLS e ]OR the five years preceding the outbreak of the European war I was engaged in a special-in- vestigation of co-operative and publicly owned industrial and economic enterprises in Great Britain, on the continent and in Australia and New Zealand. 1 was all this time engaged by the co-operatwe societies, trades unions and the Labor parties.of these eount.nes as a lecturer or , organizer. I went everywhere w:th the best introductions for my purpose which one could carry, including the credentials of a special commission for the city of Milwaukee, but my books had gone before me, and in every country visited I was welcomed and given every opportunity for study at first hand sources of information. I was five years out of my own country and never presented any. of the intro- ductions which I ecarried, nor did I at any time ask for or carry a passport. I was on the British Labor party platform throughout the two parliamentary campaigns of . 1910, the one at the beginning and the other at the end of the year. These were the campaigns when the taxing of unimproved land values and the reg- istration of all British lands with values definitely fixed for taxing purposes, home rule and the end- ing of the veto power of the house of lords were the questions in issue. I was in attendance at an international congress at Copenhagen; was actively engaged in five of the six Australian states; took part in a national campaign in a fight to amend the constitution, to give to the Augtralian commonwealth the power to deal with industrial and commercial matters, both as a speaker and in the prepargtion of spe- cial campaign literature.. For the three years that I was in New Zealand I was officially engaged for two years in a campaign to bring about the unity of her scattered industrial ~organizations, which was finally accomplished, and during the last year I was engaged as. the national organizer of the new united body which had been created SOURCES. OF e INFORMATION Dunng all this time I was. very close to the men who had ‘'made things happen in those countries - and who were at the same time responsible" for “the adminjstration -of ‘most impbrtsnt affairs, and with whom I4iad: frequent opportnmty to discuss - at length the matters concerning which I am about to write, Among them I must mention: In Great Britain—J., Ramsey McDonald then president of the British Labor party and the ‘most effective organizer of labor forces in the English- speaking world; George Barnes,” whom "I have known for a quarter of a century, then a strong ° factor in the British Labor party and now a mem- - ‘ber of the war council of the British empire; Kier N\ Hardie, then living, who had been the chief builder of the modern labor movement in Great Bnta‘m, and still was the heart and conscience of the Brit- - ish labor world, and George Menzlen, formerly . then and: for many years chief of the municlpal - home building department in Glasgow. » “In Germany—Herman Molkenbuhr once 1 but then the national secretary of the Social Demo- crats of Germany, a body which was everywhere acknowledged to be the most perfect organization of any sort anywhere in the world. In Belgium—Emile Vandervelde, then the leader of the workingmen of Belgium and since the out- break of the war the secretary of state for the Belgian government. In France—Jean Longeut, who writes and speaks, as if each were his nativé tongue, all the leading languages of Europe, and who knows in detail more about the labor movement the world over than any one else I have ever known. A LAWGIVER FOR THE PEOPLE I was longer in Australia and New Zealand, and the list of those who were good enough to gulde and to assist me in the investigations made would be too, long a list to name, but Edward Tregear of New Zealand must be mentioned. I was intro- duced to him in Australia by W. M. Hughes, then the attorney general but now the prime minister of the Australian commonwealth. Mr. Tregear had been the author of more than three-fourths of all the labor legislation which had made New Zealand famous. He had been for 20 years the chief of the national department of labor, largely engaged in the administration of the laws which he himself had prepared. He was president of the royal commission on the high cost of living during my stay in that country. He was a nearby neighbor. He was a member of every- national committee under which I was engaged, and we sat together as colleagues in many conferences and sometimes in the midst of great uproar and dis- order. On the day of final victory for the inde- pendence and unity of labor in New Zealand, when a conference made up of delegates from all the industrial and political organizations of labor in the country created a new national body, he was. made its first president by the same vote which also made me its first national orgamzer There is practically nothmg of importance in connection with the progressive life of New Zealand concern- ing which he did not have personal knowledge; and for three years all sorts of public documents, his own library and prolonged interviews without num- ber, aided me in trying to understand some of the perplexities and misunderstandings in connection with that country. _ He was the first to welcome me on my coming ~ -Walter Tlumi:e MI“}\ president of a carpenterl union, in_Chicago, but ——time and place that after a lifetime of work in It is charactenstlc of our serious reform on three continents without inter- ‘ference ‘Mr. Mills should now have an indictment . hanging ever him framed up by the; lick-. ¢ splttle pollticlans in our Northwest. PAGE FIVE to New Zealand. He was among the very last to say “goodby” at the gangway when we sailed for home, and he was the first one to follow me with kindly greetings after our arrival in San Francisco. I have been asked to give, in a few brief articles, some account of the political, economic and co- operative activities in New Zealand, which have made a small island, 1,200 miles from the main- land and with less than a million population, one of the best known countries in the world. I have mentioned the sources of my information and my opportunities for investigation both in New Zealand and elsewhere that I may assure my readers that the articles which are to follow are not the result of conclusions hurriedly arrived at and within lim- ited territories or based on information ‘obtained while traveling on a limited ticket, or from a news- ~ paper clipping bureau. THE NEW DAY BELONGS TO THE BUILDERS The war is over. The world will now be inter- ested to know about peacetime measures. the war, New Zealand has sent 100,000 soldiers to the front. That would practically be all the abl:- bodied men in the whole country and it would be one-half of its total adult male population. I have no special knowledge, not within .the reach of others, as to war activities, but the war is over: and many of the things done in New Zealand be- fore the war will now have a better chance to be undertaken in all lands after the war than they ever had before the war. I shall consider, therefore,” only “NEW ZEALAND BEFORE THE WAR.” When the American revolutionary war was bver, it was not possible any longer for England to ship any more of our great-great—grandfathers to America as convicts from the British prisons to be sold at auction to American employers. The Brit- ish prison output was then sent to Australia, and as the conviets got there before the settlers did all the horrors of the convict camps of Hobart - Town and Botany Bay became a possibility. When the settlers did come to Australia, after the‘ dis- covery of gold,’and labor troubles arose, the con- viets. were used as special guards,hand promised their liberty for effective service against the re- volting miners, and in this way the labor war was on from the very beginning. The earliest organized protest against the mili- tary discipline of the British convict camp, as applied to the settlers, was made by the miners at Ballarat, among whom was a body of “ ’49ers,” direct from Caglifornia and beafing the very re- markable name of “The California Revolutionary Revolver association.” i A battle was fought at Ballarat. The revolting miners were slain or scattered. But the British government interfered and the beginning was made of self-government, with the leaders of the “Re- volver association” among the earliest builders of the Australian commonwealth. On the site of the Eureka stockade, where this battle was fough there now stands a monument, the pride of the nation, which will mark forever the sacred ground “Where Australia’s Sons of Freedom Fell.” YANKEES IN NEW ZEALAND $ ’]I)uring the American Revolutionary war the :American colonists guaranteed to the British gov- ernment a safe conduct for Captain Cook in his voyage of discovery around the world, and Cook then visited and made known to the world ‘the land ‘now known as New Zealand. After the American Revolutlon, the New Eng- land whalers did a thriving business in the South sea waters and established many camps m this “Land of the Cannibal Islands.” Many. of the “best families of New England 2 whose fortunes were made in the South seas, are © well known in New Zealand These New England millionaires: have many half-blood Maori cousins of high character and ability bearing with great pride these good old New England names of their seafaring New England grandfathers. For this ' reason, the early lustory of New Zealand finds its original documents: in the “log books” “of the old whaling ships preserved in the museums of New Bedford, Mass.,, or by many of the “very best famlhes" in New: York and Brooklyn. : : (The subject of the next article in this series will | - be “The Rise and Fall of the Anstnhan 'l‘ones").; . During o S R T SECTOTRS SS RA T