Addressing a mass meeting at Falkirk recently under the auspices of the National Union of Railwaymen, Mr. J. H. Thomas said that the cause of their failures, if failures there were, was not due to their leaders nor to the Government, but to jealousies and suspicious that existed in their ranks. industrially it was the mad, blind, and insane policy of allowing craft and class differences to divide them that had ruined the working-class movement, and if it were pursued it would damn the movement for all time.
They could not find a permanent solution of existing social and economic evils by methods of sabotage or bloodshed. It was not common sense to withdraw labour or to strike and cause social upheaval problematically to obtain that which could be most speedily, effectively, and permanently secured by the exercise of their political powers at the ballot-box.
He advocated more loyalty among trade unions, and said Trade Unionism did not mean addressing each other as "comrade" at Sunda; afternoon meetings and cutting other's throats on Monday morning. While he believed that the power to strike was not only the most effective bargaining power that the workers possessed, and that it was a power that must never be given up by the working class, he argued strongly that the strike must not be the first, but the last weapon used, and that every other means be should be utilized to settle disputes before a strike was resorted to.
The method by which they could get cheaper travelling for the public and good conditions for themselves wag not by following the policy of those who told them that they had got to do as little as possible, but by realizing that, just as they were going to demand good conditions for themselves, so in return for those conditions they ought to give the maximum effort to those who employed them. supplied makes the future hopeful With favourable weather the tillage in certain places promises to be greater than last year.
"However, it must not be forgotten that we are feeding people on starvation rations, which must be augmented in view of the commencement of field labours. Reviewing these statistics, M. Vinokurov, chairman of—the Relief Commission, urges the speediest realization of the appropriated Church treasures for purchasing food abroad, so as to feed the whole of the famine population."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.