| | ia raed
|
{

New Zealand sparked
Labor Day tradition

Vv

ik AG Can
| Xhibit;
' Dest tae

adettes (above) famed precision dance line,
°n in Toronto this year. The 78th edition of t
Sch anadian ti orms daily at the bandstand shell. Aue.
Dp, Clite yee ’S 8S Jimmy Namaro, Priscilla Wright (0 r
" Pobolin Sana eKay, the Leslie Bell Singers, K ing see ead Pemes Sy ara ae
ho’) Whi van Romanoff. Cliff McKay’s Holiday Ranch 1

ite i le the Leslie Bell Singers are ab ably this country’s gare ihe Rice Sear
team G the bandstand shell every afternoon and evening is the internation

Sheetal offer
to all subscribers
FALSE WITNESS

by HARVEY MATUSOW

are featured at the Canadian National
he CNE opened last week and Canada’s
on the hour-long shows are such
“Man in the Raincoat” fame), Oral

y
f

@ 50¢ and 6-month sub
e 25¢ and I-year sub

@ “In all of the literature dealing
with the dark annals of phe A
political intrigue and an .
democratic conspiracy, I know :
no more significant and remax -
able work than this book ..-

ALBERT E. KAHN

ALBER
T
—.  ~ *. KAHN Ps

— ee

To; p NOW
F AND SEND :
: "BUNE PUBLISHING ced Room 6 — 426 Main

Please send FALSE WITNESS

Street, Vancouver 4, B.C.

N :
i ae c (New sub) O (Renewal)
‘DdREg ia he cya eee Se Oh eal
eee

| “Closed yi 1) (Cheque)

C) (Money order)

pes a shelf high up on the
wall of the Trades Hall in
Wellington, New Zealand, a
Lronze bust of a stern, be-
whiskered old man frowns
Gown on council meetings. It
is that of Samuel Duncan Par.
nell, the British-born carpen-
ter who over a century ago
pioneered the movement for
the eight-hour day in New
Zealand—and the world. The
struggles Parnell inspired are
part of the heritage Canadian
workers celebrate on their
Labor» Day holiday.

The New Zealand Company
magnates may have dreamed
of transplanting the British
social system holus-bolus in-
to New Zealand, but many of
the working men they brought
ovt as indentured labor had
other ideas.

Parnell .was.one.of these
men. a :

On the Way out to what
was then the colony of New
Zealand in 1839, he entered
into an agreement with the
other carpenters on board the
snip that they would not work
longer than eight hours a
day.

To realize how revolution-
ary this was, you have to re-
member that the regular
working day ofa _ British
tradesman at that time was
14 hours.

On Petone beach, a few
days after landing, Parnell
fought and won the first strike
in the wgzld for the eight-
HOUT aye

The tale is told of how,
vhen asked by a rich merch-
ant called Hunter (later Sir
George, and a mayor of Well-
ington) to build a store for
tim for wages, Parnell laid
down the eight-hour day as
one of his conditions.

Hunter told him not to be
absurd. But when he found
he could get no one to do the
job without the same condi-
tion, Hunter came back and
hired Parnell — on Parnell’s
terms.

* * *

Half a century later, when
Labor Day first came to be
celebrated, Edward Player, an
old Wellington worker who
remembered the __ incident,
wrote to the Wellington Even-
ing Post (June 6, 1890):

“Mr. Parnell, by making a
dead stand, carried his point,
for which thousands at this
day and for time to come
should be grateful.”

The movement caught on
like wildfire.

First, Parnell and others

(notably two other fellow-
passengers from the same
ship, Taylor and Ticehurst)
formed the Carpenters’ Asso-
ciation — New Zealand's first
curpenters’ union — with the
eight-hour day adopted as a
basic tenet.

Then, in October, 1840, on
a Sunday morning, a “Labor
Conference” was held on the
Wellington foreshore “in front
of German Brown’s” public
house, and it was resolved

‘that “Eight hours was to be

the working day, and that
anyone offending be ducked
in the harbor.”

After this very efficacious
threat of direct action, the
eight-hour day was solidly es-
tablished in Wellington — es-
pecially in the trades.

The conditions of laborers,
and conspicuously longshore-
men, tagged behind. Parnell
agitated for the extension of
the eight-hour day to all in-
dustries, and his influence ap-
pears to have been strong
among longshoremen’s and
laborers’ organizations.

But the employers of 100
vears ago were no _ softer
hearted than those of today.
The New Zealand Company
did not just sit back and take
the eight-hour movement
kindly.

A letter in the Auckland
Herald on May 3, 1890 (fol-
1owing the institution of May
Day celebrations overseas),
described how the sharp strug-
gle which preluded introduc-
tion of the eight-hour day
into Auckland in the eighteen-
fifties was led by a certain
William Griffin, “who had
keen connected with the
Chartist movement in Eng-
land.”

Within the next half-cen-
tury the flame Parnell lit on
Petone beach had spread far
across the world: In turn it
swept the Australian colonies,
the Americas and Europe.

In the socialist- and many
other countries May Day is
traditionally the day when the
workers recall their struggles
and celebrate their advances.

In New Zealand, Labor Day
is celebrated on- October 28,
ana in Canada and the Unit-
ed States the first Monday in
September is officially desig-
nated as the Labor Day na-
tional holiday. Whatever the
day, its significance for work-
ers is the heritage of struggle
from which it arose.

337 West Pender

LABOR DAY GREETINGS

To All Our Customers, Friends & Shareholders

PEOPLE’S CO-OP BOOKSTORE

Vancouver 3, B.C.

MArine 8536

August 31, 1956 —

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — PAGE 13