Tokyo, Aug. 22.
Arrangements are being made to call the first of a series of Asiatic labour conferences in Shang. hai next year, according to Mr. Bunji Suauki, president of the. Japan Federation of Labour. Mr. Suzuki recently returned from Geneva, where he represented Japan's workers at the Labour Congress and said that plans for these conferences were discussed between him and India's delegate.
"As a. matter of fact," Mr. Suauki said, "the proposal was first made by the Indian delegates and I readily agreed. This proposed conference is not to be in any sense Pan-Asian Labour Congress. Asia's Labour is in a terribly backward condition, and the strides! made by the' capitalists of our continent have been far above the progress made by the workers. We are concerned with an economic problem of our own primarily; far as T can help it, there will be nio_polities discussed."
Further explaining his plan, Mr. hi 'Suzuki said it seemed to him' that in Europe Inbour was tending to Jean towards the left and was inclined to follow the Third Inter~ nationale. "The same thing might befall us," he added, "if we have to face the miseries that have come on Europe since the war. This proposed conference, then, ded as a Coloured to offset the Third lo, at least in our home During the Geneva Congress, the Australian labour delegate suggest that a Pan-Pacific Labour Conference be called. This Mr. Suzuki refused, as he said he wished to sec a Pan-Asian Labour Conference first meet, News reaching Japan is to the effect that the Chinese are not favourably inclined towards Mr. Suzuki's scheme, and that the greatest opposite come from Japanese capitalists in China, The Frincipal grounds for opposition are that if the proposed Asian Labour Conference includes within fits scope the solution of problems relating to Chinese labour, then such cannot be done without also having representatives of French, British and American capitalists st the round-table discussion. Furthermore, the saner clements here point out that such a thing Asian Labour Conference wil seized upon by the fire-caters and the chronic mischief-makers Japan, China, India and elsewhere to stir up not merely trouble between workers and their employfers, but also to instigate thereby political embroitments.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.