THE BLACKBALL CRISIS.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 158, 28 March 1908, Page 4

THE BLACKBALL CRISIS.

The announcement, made to-day that it was the Labour- Department that was conducting the recent mysterious "negotiations" Vith the Blackball strikers will not occasion surprise. Nor is'there much cause for surprise in the failure of the Department to effect a settlement, although-tho prospects of peace must, have been good a couple of days ago. ■ The continued re-; fusal of the. men to meet concession with friendliness, and their .capricious insistence at the last upon a . condition which they'had resigned earlier in the negotiations; long ago placed them beyond the reach of .public'sympathy, whatever sympathy • may. be extended to their wives and families: • By .their own . acts the' men have eliminated every issue upon which 'they might claim public consideration, and have reduced the' situation to a plain con- , flict, not between a cruel employer and his flowntrodden employees, but between law and anarchy. ■ Instructions have now been issued to the, Labour Department directing, the collection of the fine imposedupon the Union, and, it is : probable tliat the Union as a body, and its members as individuals, will make', it a matter 'of principle to resist the civil processes of the law.- The Government seems unlikely, to relax its efforts to induce the men to spare it the embarrassment of subjecting the Act to the test. ' This . prolonged trafficking with the ; lawbreakers has had a very bad effect, and it is difficult to' Over-estimate the moral'wrong, that has already been s done through. the Ministerial juggling » with justice: for political ends. The : one hopefiU'fact in as melancholy a; spectacle as the country has ever wit- • nessed is the Premier's belated pledge to uphold /the -law. "It innist 'not be . forgotten that the Blackball Company '. has sustained "a severe. pecuniary loss, and that the mine has'been' idlei. while : the Government has been dallying. Let' there be Ho more wavering fiow.