THE INDUSTRIAL WAR.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 235, 4 October 1928, Page 6

THE INDUSTRIAL WAR.

It is satisfactory to be able to state that the industrial outlook in Australia is rather less gloomy to-day than it was yesterday. The maritime unions have not yet concluded their conference, but it is a significant and important fact that Mr. Garden and the extremists have failed to carry the unions with them. Garden's resolutions favouring an extension of the strike, and, in fact, declaring industrial war throughout the Commonwealth, were not adopted, and his speech is said to have been received coldly. Mr. Scullin, the leader of the Australian Labour Party, courageously charged Garden and his accomplices yrith attempting to push the men into risks and dangers that they would not face themselves, and generally the feeling of the meeting was against a wider extension of the trouble. At the same time there were signs of violent and dangerous feeling plainly visible. The decision of the Federal Government to defend free labour at all costs has evidently aroused bitter resentment, and Mr.'Anstey, while urging the men to go back to work, advised them to "make it lively for the volunteers." Mr. Anstey during the Great War was notorious for his "pacifist" activities, but when it comes to the "class war" he is the implacable enemy of peace and goodwill. It is at this point that the gravest danger to industrial stability and security manifests itself. For if the extremists among the. workers are once convinced that the authorities are unwilling <or unablo to to all necessary lengths to enforce. law and jprder, the sun of Bolshevism will soon rise in Australia.