Pioneer

Electric Theatre. Next week's shows at the Electric Theatre in- clude two of the strongest top-liners ever brought to Merthyr. "Spinner o' Dreams," which heads the list from Monday to Wednes- day, is one of those charming productions which, daya, ddition to strong drama and love interest, carry us back in imagination to the times long since passed into the museum of history. "Spin- ner o' Dreams" takes us back to the 1790's or thereabouts to a time when the Industrial Re- volution was producing the inventions that were to transform the whole life of the world; and here we are introduced to the inspiring and to the degrading side of that period. To the in- ventor who creates and the grab-aJIs who scheme to take from him not only the produce of his brain—but also the girl he loves. It is an ex- hilarating story of unusual merit. In addition the same programme will be noteworthy from the appearance of the first instalment of that great romantic serial The Brass Bullet," in which the sensational chief parts fall to Juanita Hanson—the most beautiful of film stars-and to Jack Mulliall, whose fame needs no bush to a cinema-goer. "Son of a Hun" is the Sunshine comedy, and Count Bernstorn's Secrets come to an all too early conclusion. From Thursday on Mary Cholmondeley's greatest literary effort, Red Pottage," in a dramatised form, occupies pride of place. The story treated a furore whetr-ft first appeared, running through many editions and being trans- lated into almost every language, and, from what is reported in the trade press, its picturised version should prove even more successful than the written words. It has a great caste, in- cluding C. Aubrey Smith, Gerald Ames, Holman Clark and Miss Mary Dibley. Then there is another Chaplin—no, not another, a different Chaplin. The Adventurer" is by consensus of opinion the greatest thing that the immortal Charles ever did for the Walker Corporation. Altogether it is a great week—fitting usher to Whitsun fun.

Collier Boy's Wages. WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR PAYMENT? I Whether a colliery company is responsible for the payment of wages to a boy assistant to a s-tall holder was the issue in a wages claim heard by the Merthyr Stipendiary (Mr. R. A. Griffith) on Friday when two lads, Frank Davies 06), Pieton-street, and Edward Harris, Lower Taff-street, Merthyr, respectively claiinm t2 6s. and 13s. from the Hills-Plymouth Colliery Com- pany (Ltd.) in wages due to them. For the plaintiffs, Mr. Edward Roberts (Dow- Jais) stated that a man, named Daniel Jones, with whom they worked, two days prior to the pay-day, January lRth, drew the money coining to him for the production accounted for in his stall for the week and left his job at the South- pit, Abercanaid, to go timber felling at Aber- gavenny, but out of this money did not pay the share due to the lads and included in the amount paid him) for their work. There was a week's services owing to Davies and two hours to Harris. The custom in the Coalfield was for the work done by collier-bovs to he included on the pay-docket of the stall-holder but, continued Mr. Roberts, in receiving monies for this week, the master-collier was acting as agent for the company. In giving judgment for the respondents with costs, the Stipendiary remarked he was still of the opinion that there was a contract of employ- ment between the company and the boys who signed the Conciliation Board Agreement on en- gagement, but as there was an established prac- tice at this pit to pay the boys through the stall-holder he held that there was implied authority by reason of this general practice to pay Jones.

Merthyr Tydfil Union. TO TRADESMEN AND OTHERS. THE Guardians of the Poor of the Merthyr JL Tydfil Union invite Tenders for the supply to the Workhouse (Merthyr Tydfil), Panty- scallog House (Dowlais), and the Cottage Homes (Llwydcoed, Aberdare, Hirwain, Abercwmboi and Cwmbach) of the undermentioned articles, viz:— FOR THREE MONTHS from the 1st July, 1919, to the 30th September, 1919: Meat (not foreign), Fish, Groceries and Provisions, To- bacco and Snuff, Greengroceries, Coal, Coke and Vegetables. Printed Forms of Tender (which alone will be received) and which contain the Conditions of Contract) may be obtained on application to the Master of the Poor Law Institution, Merthyr Tydfil, or the Superintendent of the Cottage Homes, Llwydcoed, Aberdare, who will furnish any other particulars. Tenders, with samples where required, must be in my hands not later than Friday, the 13th day of June, 1919. The Guardians do not bind themselves to ac- cept the lowest or any Tender, and reserve the right to accept the whole or any part of any Tender as they may think fit to select, also to accept a Tender in respect only of a portion of the quantity required of any article. By Order, FRANK T. JAMES, Clerk. Union Offices, High Street, Merthyr Tydfil. WINNING Numbers of Drawing in aid of Mr. Samuel Price, 15 Dane Street, Mer- thyr: 1st prize, 1683; 2nd. 1749; 3rd, 3272.— Hugh Morris (Secretary). 4 Dane Street, Mer- thyr.

The Clerks' Strike. WEllE we living in the youth of our epoch we should all be laughing next week over the hu- mours of some satirist who had lampooned the Merthyr Corporation for its farcica l folly in its treatment of its clerks. But we do not live in spacious days of laughter. The sordid grind of the machine age rushing headlong to nowhere must find expression in an epigram or a cartoon as it wildly streams forward sweatingly strug- gling to keep pace with life, or the expression is lost. It is a pity, too. It were well that some poet-some ragamuffin Francoise Villon for ex- ample—should sing lyrically to the surprising glories of thaumaturgists who blackleg on the doctors; of forensic skill that battens on the disputes of litigant property owners, and wins immortal fame in contentious arguments against widows who have stolen the waste products of their dead husband's labours from the coal-tips of lackeys who live fat and. from every useful aspect, lazy lives as the jackals of mammoth cor- porations that nrmiy believe in organisation amongst capitalists and Socialism for miDion- aires only, while denying their own methods and beliefs to the employees they control. Think of the burlesque possibilities of a play staged in the Council Chamber. Scene 1 is contract day. One by one are opene d the tenders of printers, plumbers, and scavenging contractors—and ever the Fair Wage Clause is rigorously run like a yard-stick along the whole. The imaginary firm ot Jones, Jones. Jones and Jones undercut Davies and Lloyd for the removal of house re- fuse in I"a,i-k AVii-(i, out a letter is received from the Associated Union of Dustmen and Disinfee- tors pointing out that the united Joneses are paying a half-penny under the district rate—21- a week under trade union wages. The Joneses —a singularly bad plural that—are scratched—- Davies and Lloyd, the employers of trade un ion labour secure the contract. Scene 2 introduces us to the same gentlemen whom we have seen as the upholders of trade unionism and fair wages sitting as before, but this time its own cI('k s are asking that their union shall be recognised, and that they shall receive a subsistence wage. ?Iiiit how different the action How hollow the pretences of Scene 1 are shown to be. The be- nignant upholders of trades unionism elsewhere, are hysterically refusing to recognise the National Union of Clerks; are talking loudly of the happy and easy life of the clerk, of his good wages, and of his treachery in daring to emu- late the tactics his fellow workers in industry have proven to be efficacious. The idiocy of the whole position is apparant so. But as we have said, these days are not the days of satire, or of topical lampoonery on the local stage. More's the pity. To-day we reduce our arguments to dry-as-dust £ s. d., and then transmute legal tender money into comparative statistics from indexed tables, on a base year standing at 100. To a few of us this technical way of stating the premises of an argument and conclusion has the merit of being clear and making for brevity, but the few are not to be found either on the bourgeoisie benches of the Merthyr Town Coun- cil, or among the men on the street, so the trans- formation has to be carried back to the money wage as it effects the clerk's home. For every pound of butter that the clerk's wife bought and used in 1914, she has had to substitute three- quarters of a pound of margarine; for every three pairs of boots that a clerk's family con- sumed, one pair has now to suffice; for every new suit, costume or dress that fell to the family's lot on the family income of 1914 there is now next to no provision on the wages paid. The clerk's standard of 1914 was the standard t of a semi-skilled labourer on the average, never rising higher than that of a skilled worker in its heads, and to-day lie is so far behind the standard of either that his job would be rejected with contempt by the unskilled workers at the price he has been willing to accept as the value of his human energy, with his special technical training. And withal he is expected to be cre- ditable to his occupation and office by living in a respectable neigh bourhood, and dressing a little better than the average. God forgive him. That neighbourhood, and those clothes have meant that the stomachs of he and his have been but sparsely pandered to. And to-day, in the great surge of democratic thought his economic posi- tion has compelled him to take his part as a militant. Force of circumstances painfully evi- dent to his personal experience has sloughed off the artificial blinkers that he mistakenly allowed others to put over his eyes. He knows now that the snobbery that gave him a special niche in the world apart and distinct from the work- ing class as a whole, was a foolish snobbery, and in his restored sight he has absorbed the lesson of combination, of unified strength of the economies of labour—and he has withdrawn his commodity from the market. And the useless vendors of patent concoctions almost as useless as themselves, and their cronies who live para- sitic-ally on the system in which they are such small fry, have had the audacity to* dehv him the rights which his more rugged forefathers won in 1824. For months they dawdle with his appeal to them; and then, when the inevitable breaking-point is reached, they make the town look ridiculous in their attempts to save the product of a 4d. rate. Poor fools, they are the historical successors to the Luddites of the past. Just as those deluded disciples of a lunatic saw in the machines which they broke the beginning of a new system, so in the fellowship of the clerks ami the policemen with their fellows of the work-a-day world these petty bourgeoisie re- presentatives see the end of their system, and the dawn of the new democracy. Unconsciously they act true to their class instincts, but since that unconsciousness presses heavy upon our fellows and their dependents we tell them in all consciousness that the strike must cease in the recognition of their clerks as trades unionists, and in the establishment of a justly graded scale of salaries and in all consciousness we re- mind those poltroons who are just now talking about dismissals that their words are idle; that the workers will not allow it—that not the clerks, who have but played the part of men, but they, who have played the part of beasts, are the ones who shall go—next November.

I The Folly of Fools. To mi-: follies of officialdom, and particularly of our bureaucratic specia l service branches t here is no end. Day by day, week by week, our news- papers record their fatuous methods, and only on occasions when the very elastic line of tolera- tion is widely over-stretched does the public manifest its disapproval, as it is still manifest- ing it in connection with the Churchillian cir- cular to commanding officers that the "Herald" brought to light. We would call attention to the following paragraph taken from last Fri- day's Manchester Guardian as a starring jl- lustration of the appalling ignorance and as- tounding folly to which our cherished institu- tions can fall. The paragraph was headed "Police and Sheffield Socialists," and read: Previous to the passing of the royal proces- sion throngh Sheffield on Tuesday, thirteen Scot- land Yard men took possession of the Briti"h lan(i Yii-(l i)ieii took pos.(,s?.s1()ii ()f tit(,l So(-.Za llst 1':ii-ty i,(K)iyis 111(1 1.1.1(1 ill(,Ill ililtil ill", seized and the name s of those present were taken." Was there ever anything so silly in this world r Here is a responsible political pro- pagandist hody, no more loyal or disloyal to the Crown than any and every other working-class organisation, dependent entirely upon its open- ness and integrity for the furtherance of its cause, treated by a handful of flat-footed police- men, acting in all probability at the dictates of an official whose sole qualification for his posi- tion is not police proficiency but army officer experience, as though they were mad Nihilists with anything to gain and nothing to lose from the brainless excitement of bombing a royal car. We do not know from statistics, but from news- paper stories and magazine articles in the past we should imagine that about the safest place of all during a bomb outrage is the fancied ob- jective of the bomber and at all events we do know that the royal occupation of car riding is much less risky than the everv-day industrial life of a collier or a railway worker. Hut ali that aside, let us again remind the public that the U.S. P. has nothing more explosive in its platform and policy than the responsible and convinced Socialist opinion of its speakers and rank-atid-lile. Indeed, from the capitalist point of view the best thing that could happun to stem the over widening surge 0" Socialism in this country would bo that the B.S.P. or any of the kindred organisations should emulate the sur- prising ability of Capitalism's paid myrmidons to do foolish tilings. But-we don't, and we don't need to. There is, however, another side to the story, and one that die public should never lose sight of. The member^ of Socialist organi- sations are citizens of this country, and are en- titled to the civic- privileges won by the citizens of the country, no le.-s than their lory or Liberal antagonists on the political field. Those privileges have been flouted and openly insulted under the wide powers of D.O.R.A. during the war. But the war is over now, and it is up to everyone who thinks aught to see that the privileges of the country are not denied to a considerable body of public opinion in the country because it happens to think in a manner differ- ent to the heads of Scotland Yard or of any- where else. This differentiation against Social- ists is tantamount to a virtual proscription of outlawry against us. and since wo, like every other political party, attract to oursel ves ail kinds and conditions of men, it will not be sur- prising if we produce hysterical subjects who will emulate Carson in seeking to effect their purposes in unconstitutional ways. That has always been the history of Nihilist outrage, and although we shall guard against such happen- ings in every possible way, still the folly of the fools at Scotland Yard may easily fire to folly the foolish neurotics of which we may have a share in the Scx-ialist increment. To prevent any such unfortunate consummation we protest against the action in Sheffield, and trust that our allies in the industrial organisations will remind the powers that be that we, even the B.S.P. members, are human, law-abiding citizens with rights not to be lightly set aside by fools in high places.

Hawker's Safety. AMONGST the singularly few happy pieces of ] news that the world has had since August, 191 I. was that received in Merthyr on Sunday, and given by ourselves to the mass meeting on Thomastown Park, announcing th,e safety of the two intrepid airmen, Hawker and (jreaves. The spirit that leads men to pioneer ways in loco- motion, to attest their faith in mechanical and surgical invention by submitting their lives valiantly to the test of actual trial, is the spirit that has meant progress to the world, and even ] those who have professed an inability to see tie" utility of an attempt to fly the hungry wastes of the Atlantic have been moved to an admira- tion for the splendid heriosm of peace that these men manifested, the while they have do- loriously cried for an Act of Parliament to make suicide by these means illegal. No Act of Par- liament would suffice to kill such a spirit as that that burns in the breast of Hawker and his colleague, and all that such a measure could do at best would be to alter the venue of the at- tempts. Essentially the spirit that led Hawker to make the trial, is the same spirit that burns in the heart of every Socialist. It is the same clear faith, the sline,bri gbt conviction, the same determination to submit life itself to the testing of the belief and ideal that animates, and in the same way that Hawker was prepared to venture all on that faith so also must the Socialist be prepared to stand the test of life and liberty in order to secure the advance of his cause.

I .N otes from London I (Prom our London Correspondent). PARLIAMENT, WORKERS AND MASTERS. As Parliament continues to fail, so unrest con- tinues to spread in the country-a,nd that is not a happy state of things. The situation is creat- ing a strong feeling among the more active mem- bers of the Labour Movement that industrial action alone can be relied upon to advance the cause of the workers. That is not a very happy state of things either. Indeed, it may lead to disaster. Parliament has failed because the workers have never taken their politics seriously. As one sits in the galleries of the House watch- ing, one realises that Parliament has not failed iiig, one i-(?alises tliit Piti-1).iiii(?iit liis not fa.11(?(i politics seriously. Parliament gives to them all the forces of the police and military and or- ganised coercion to beat- the workers in times of industrial trouble. To overcome this tremendous obstacle in the road to freedom, the working- classes must use Parliament, as they have never yet used it to back up their industrial action.. I POLICE AND DISCHARCED SOLDIERS. This necessity is made perfectly clear by the trouble that arose out of the demonstration of discharged soldiers in London on Monday. The discharged soldiers, it must he remembered, are workers. Justice for them cannot be achieved without justice for the genera l working class. Their progress will be measured by the progress of the whole Labour Movement politically and industrially. The deputation from the dis- charged men which waited upon the Ministry of Labour did not get "hat it considered as satis- factory replies to its statement of grievances. The demonstrators therefore marched from Hyde Park towards the House of Commons, and near that sacred building came into conflict with the police. The result was a little mild rioting. Owing to the capitalist control of the House of Legislation the police are compelled to stand in apparent opposition to their fellows. But the letter from the secretary of the Police Union which was published in the Daily Herald of Tuesday is a proof that this is not the desire of the police themselves. The great value of that letter is in the fact that it has been endorsed at the meetings of the Police that have been held. THE DISCHARGED MEN'S CASE. As a result of Monday s row, the grievances of the discharged men were discussed i: the House on Wednesday. Mr. Hogge opene,d the debate with a long and able statement of the causes of their discontent. The great issue, of course, is unemployment, and the very fafft that the question exists is a complete proof of the absolute failure of the Government. If it can- not solve the question, and it cannot, it is not fitted to continue the direction of the nation's affairs. It cannot solve the problem because it is the servant of the Big Business Bosses, and they are not going to have the nation organised properly, because, as Mr. Hopkinson put it in the course of the debate—and he is not a La- gour representative but an employer, and I think he could not have realised how much he was giving away when lie made the stakment-- One cannot serve one's country and accumu- late money at the same time." That sentiment was loudly cheered from the Labour benches. It was, of course, the naked truth. BACK UP THE LABOUR LEFT WING! The whole situation is one of tremendous seriousness, and before the Government is aware, it may be overwhelmed with trouble 011 every hand. Its policy, nationally and internationally, is disastrous to stability and prosperity. We must get a move OIl in the direction of real Socialism. The condition of the world demands Socialist administratIOn-that is administration in the interests of the people, with no regard to individual profit-making. It is most satisfac- tory to note a growing spirit of unrest among the left wing of the Parliamentary Labour Party. That wing must lie strengthened. Its greatest strength lies in the rank-an-tile move- ment in the country, and it must be made fully a wan' of the support that is behind it. Such en- of tlit, ,iil)port tliit 1. 1)(,Iillti(i it. Sucli t?ii- an effective fighting policy. There are those in the Parliamentary Party w ho desire sucii. a policy. v' -4_-

Ti e 1 heatre Royal If Mr. Dry's purpose in following "Romance" with "Ignorance" at the Theatre Royal was to show to the public the tremendous range of the stage as a platform of life I must sincerely con- gratulate him on his success, for I do not think that a stronger contrast between idealism and stark, convincing realism, oould have been found than these two plays, so perfect in their c-lasses, presents. Last week we moved along the moun- tain tops of a world called into being in the imagina.tion of an artist, we ate the lotust and were entranced; but this week we have been re- called to earth with a hump; for the author of "Ignorance" has looked life straight in the eyes in its ugliest environment, and has reproduced the hell of horror he saw in burning scenes that speak truthfully across t,]:(? an indict ment of us all, and a call to social service. He has not idealised his slums at all a realist con- scious that truth was more than sufficient to speak its own words he has even refused to idealise his language, and the words that burst from the lips of the submerged family we live with for two hours are the explosive words that we should hear—aye, and use, too—did we live their fearsome* lives. Mr. Raymond Wallace, whose part is that of the doctor-reformer, at times comes near to Socialism in his advocacy of a removal of the ignorance existant among the poor; and his declaration that drink is not the •ause but the effect of poverty, shows an insight that not every reformer has been able to e-mu- late. But the great character (as great in its way as that of last week) is a female part—that :-If the mother as told by Miss Clara Santlev. As she plays her part she is not an actress, she is a monument of a class; a type—a type big witli the utmost possibilities a.nd potentialities that have been ground down to make profit for others; and a type that to lift itself to full human right ha. but to realise its appalling— Ignorance. John Worth, Gertrude Gilbert, and Maud Steeple are fine players. Albert de Courville's greatest of London re- vues, "Zig-Zag!" is the attraction at the Theatre Royal during the coming week. This production drew- crowded houses in the metro- polis for more than a year, and positively took London by storm. The revue as now played is in all respects identical with the original pro- duction, and is played by a strong company of London artistes, including Ernest Sefton, Os- wald Lingardj, Doris Clayton and Katie Marsh. The wonderful Stone Age scene, Autumn scene and the Chinese Lacquer scene are considered to be amongst the finest stage effects of modern times.

The Swiss Government, in order to relieve unemployment and increase the number of houses, has decided to help builders financially, in return for a corresponding share of the profits.