ANTI=TRUST ACTIONS.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 839, 10 June 1910, Page 5

ANTI=TRUST ACTIONS.

COAL VEND AND SHIPPING FIRMS. By Tclecrapii—Press 4sso3lat;on—Copyright Sydney, June 9. Three additional writs under othoi sections of the Anti-Trust laws • have been issued against the Coal Vend, Shipping .Combine, and Union Steam Ship Company. THE LAW AND ITS PENALTIES. The. anti-trust law, in it's proper name, is the Australian Industries Preservation Act. Under the heading of the Coal Vend is included nearly all the colliery companies ill the northern district of New South Wales,' where the minors' strike originated; and co-defendants with the Coal Vend are a number of shipping companies, including the Union Com-! pany. The penalty for breach" of the lavr is .£SOO, but this is not nearly as serioua as the court's power to enforce a penalty of £5W a day as lung us Ihe breach continues, and to declare contracts illegal and void. The- cases will be heard before a judge of the High Court, sitting without a jury. • There is a right to appeal to thu Full Court, and this, la cases involving thirty odd defendants, may protract a final decision for a very long time. But while the courts are deliberating, the evidence will be published, and political capital will be made out of it. The decision of the court of public opinion, will probably be delivered in instalments long "before the law has pronounced sentence. ■ The New South Wales State elections are due in NSeptsmber, .and the campaign between the Wado Government and the Labour Opposition will cover very extensively the coal strike, the emergency Industrial Disputes Act passed by JJr. Wade to deal with it, ond the cases of the strike leaders imprisoned under that Act. Mr. W. Jl. Hughes, the moderate leader of ths strikers—the militant one, Mr. Bowling, and his lieutenants, are in prisonis now Altpvney-GeneraUof the Commonwealth, prosecuting the Coal Vend and shipping companies, with power to address interrogatories to defendants and extract evidence from them. Labour alleges that the Coal Vend was responsible for the Newcastle strike. Much may_ ba learned from this evidence before Sep'"Mr. Hughes has prpached the efficacy of the ballot-box as against violence. Mβ can claim that his prophecy is already fulfilled The ballot-box has made mm Commonwealth Attorney-General, _ prosecuting the employers who deleated militant labour in the. refcent strike. Evidence in the anti-trust actions will a»ain become a lever towards the ballotbox, and if Labour calculations are je--Used next September, the ballot-box will put the State labour party in a position to repeal Mr. Uade's Act. The imprisoned' apostles of the militant method have all the worse of the argument. Even if their martyrdom may count for votes that U siill an admission that the royal road to power is tw ballot-box.