THE ARBITRATION ACT.

Press, Volume XLIX, Issue 14840, 4 December 1913, Page 6

THE ARBITRATION ACT.

We shall be curious to see what line ; will be taken by the Government's ..enemies in their comments upon the Government's decision to proceed with Part VI. , of the consolidating and amending Arbitration Bill introduced earlier in the session. It may be as well to remind our readers that Part VI. of the Bill aims at providing machinery to lessen the liability of future strikes by labour associations not bound by any award or agreement. The important thing to be kept in mind is that-there is no denial of the right of those men to go on strike who have not contracted not to strike. It is merely provided that where a body of men desire to go on strike, they must give notice to the Minister, who will forthwith either call a conference of the parties or refer the dispute to a Labour Dispute Committee composed of representatives of both sides. The committee will endeavour to effect a settlement, but if it fails, it will make recommendations, and these will be widely published. The Minister, will then cause a secret ballot of the workers concerned to be taken, and if this is in favour of a strike, the strike may lawfully take place. The object of this plan is to secure, first, that the possibilities of peace shall be exhausted before war begin, and second, that a strike 6haU not take place unices a majority of the workers ih the trade affected really desire to go on strike. When the Bill was introduced, the Opposition and the Red Feds, and the Labour leaders generally vied with each other in grossly misrepreseirting and violently denouncing the Bill. To this day,.,great numbers of this workers are unaware -that tha

Bill excepting for Part VI., was mainly a re-enactment' of the existing law —an exact re-enactment so far as all its principles are concerned. As to Part VI., these unscrupulous critics exhausted the language in their search for phrases strong enough to condemn such an outrageous infringement of the "rights of man" as any interference whatever with the liberty to striko without notice. Perhaps a more rational view may be looked far to-day in these quarters. We are hopeful, indeed, that the terrifying images of Russia and of slaves, and the horrid visions of clanking chains, will not be again paraded by the Opposition critics. Just now they are clamouring for outside intervention, clamouring loudly for some Russian interference with the rights of the strikers. They will, perhaps, realise more clearly now that their unreasoning hostility to everything the Government said or did permitted them to realise in July, that the country will approve any reasonable attempt to insist upon deliberation before the peace of industry is broken.

Although Mr Laurenson is the official Opposition candidate, he is not quite as perfect as the Opposition would like him to be. He is, we are told by the local Opposition paper— "a safe Liberal rather than a progressive one." He refrains, that is to say—or has at any rate refrained so far—from inventing baseless calumnies against the Government, nnd he employs decent and moderate language. If it were not that he has chosen, to stand as the Opposition candidate, our Opposition friends would denounce him as a Tory. Of course, a "progressive" on the "Liberal" side is much more than one who trifles with facts in immoderate language. The real "progressive" on the Opposition ride must keep in stop with Mr Semple and the other "fellow progressives." Mr Laurenson will not be considered a sufficiently "progressive" "Liberal" unless he declares, as the official voice of the party in Opposition has declared, that th© "Liberal" policy includes nine-tenths of tho extreme policy of the Red Feds.

Commenting on Tuesday on the suggestion of the Red Fed. candidate that the Government was starving primary education in the interests of tho higher classes of education, we suggested that the State could hardly "spend more on primary education unless it taught the children twice over." A "Liberal" journal says that this means that we, and Reformers generally, think that "too much learning is bad for tne working classes,", and it begs the publio to "take note" of what is represented as a design to abolish education! There are fifty reasons why it is unnecessary to deny this exceedingly funny story. The first is that it is too silly to deceive even the most. credulous asid ignorant "Liberal" in the country. 1 Of the other forty-nine we may mention one which is worth emphasising for its own sake.. This-is, that the State educates, and will continue. to educate, every child in the country, and will continue to offer hundreds of free places and scholarships for bright children, regardless of the incomes of their parents. The State provides free primary education for all children, and it can hardly do more, and it is an undeserved reflection on the teaching profession to suggest that this education is grossly inadequate.

We feel bound to say : that it is both amusing and surprising that at this time of day oven a desperately disturbed organ of Opposition opinion should solemnly invite the public to believe that the Reformers are opposed to primary education. Even the"Opposition M.P.'s will laugh at their poor friend; their sanity on this particular point was made clear, enough in the discussion on educat.qn in the House yesterday. Prior to the victory of the Reform Party, the "Liberals" were saying that their opponents would abolish old age pensions, and part of the Opposition's -bitterness is tbe result of the public's laughing refusal to believe such a fantastic tale. The Opposition should have tried something less fantastic instead of something more fantastic still. No doubt we shall next be told that the Government intends to abolish manhood suffrage. The case of the "Liberals" is bad, we all know, but we did not know they felt it to be so desperate that in the face of the Government's education policy, arid in the face/of common sense, they must make assertions which, in their sober moments, they know will be believed by ribt a single person in the world!,

The possibility of serious trouble in the British Post Office, which is foreshadowed \'ti our cable news this morning, has been realised for some weeks. The Postal employees are for tho most part well organised, and before now they have been able to bring pressure on the Government of the day to have their wages and conditions bettered. The point at issue now is the report of the Parliamentary Committee that recently enquired into these wages and conditions. The recommendations of this Commtttee, if adopted, and. apparently the Government intends to adopt ~them, would mean an additional expenditure of £1,000,000 a year. But the men regard these recommendations as totally inadequate. They claim that the proposed increases. work out at a half penny an hour per employee, and contend that in view of tho Increased cost of living they are entitled to much more consideration. Tlie proposed increases were regarded as paltry, exciting "disappointment, disgust, and resentmea.," and -mder threat of a strike >lemands were put forward again involving an increase ot £10.000,000 a year in the Department's expenditure The Po*-traa**ter-G-eneral, however, who happens to be a man of unusual strength of character, has so far stood firm, and told the employees that if they strike they will lose their employment.

Jf tbe men do strike they will not command much public sympathy. The Post Office has issued a statement showing that postal employees are adequately paid compared with policemen and firemen, and pointing out the privileges they enjoy compared with wonters in private employment. "The whole established -staff has security of tenure and the prospect of a pension, the latter alone representing the addition ot at least ten per cent, to the actual wages received. Generous holidays on full pay are given, and every man and woman in receipt of not more than jCIoO a yea. has free medical attend-

ance, with no deduction from sali-.rv, and in case of illness may be absent on full pay for as much as six mouths, and on half pay for another six months." The employees meet the statement that increases in pay mean increased taxation, with one of those answers which make one inclined to despair of compulsory education. The last, they say, can easily come out of the profits of the Post Office 1 But the profits of tho Post Office, as they know or ought to know, go to swell the national revenue, bo that of course any curtailment of these profits mean, that that amount; of money has to be raised from another coarce. If the various societies ar-ong the employees combined to strike, abont 100,000 hands would cease work, and, of course, the inconvenience, especially during the Christmas rush, would be enormous. But of all strikes, probably a postal strike would irritate -.he public most, and undey the circumstances the Government copld not for a moment think of allowing itself to be coerced by such a method.

Lord Kitchener has been given another nickname. According to a Greek merchant resident in West Australia who has just returned from Egypt, Lord Kitchener is known now to the fellaheen as That God-sent Man. This is because the British representative and real ruler of Egypt has done a great deal for the poor cultivator, especially in the direction of freeing him from the exactions of city merchants and money-lenders. But he is correspondingly unpopular with the Liberals of Egypt, "the men who reside in the cities and live on the industry of the Arab cotton-growers" (strange how Liberals in one country iresemble "Liberals" in another) —and according to this Greek merchant it is from these angiy Liberals that threats of assassination come. This informant speaks of Lord Kitchener issuing instructions and receiving petitions as he travels about, as if he were King, and says everything points to Britain's irregular position being regularised shortly by formal declaration of occupation.

In his land policy speech at Bedford, Mr Lloyd George was on quite safe ground when he spoke against the importance with which game was invested in the British countryside, but his acquaintance with game-preserving and shooting is not intimate, and some of his remarks were at once taken up by the other side. To a New Zealander there is something quite funny in the solemnity with which various correspondents discussed in the Unionist Press the question whether or not pheasants ate mangolds. Mr Lloyd George said they did, but much newspaper space was devoted to proving that they did not. The funniest contribution to the whole game question, however, came from one of Mr Lloyd George's supporters. "A reduction in game," he wrote, "does not necessarily imply a corresponding reduction in the shooting. There ■ might be the same amount of shooting for fewer birds hit." Sport would then become a real sport, and not a massacre. "The Times _" comment on this curious reasoning—which somehow recalls to our mind Mr Buddo's decision when he had charge of such matters, that while a certain sanctuary was to be strictly preserved, a man might stand on the edge of the sanctuary and bowl over as many birds as he liked within the forbidden areaafforded humorous relief in a tragic week. "All we have to do is to learn to shoot crooked. We must try to miss our birds instead of to hit them. The crack shot of the future will be the man who at presetit secretly wishes that pheasants and hares and rabbits were a foot or so longer in the body." But, as "The Times" went on to say, "battues where sportsmen tried to shoot crooked would be so dangerous that the race of sportsmen would soon become extinct."