The Dominion. TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 1912. AFTER THE STRIKE.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1356, 6 February 1912, Page 4

The Dominion. TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 1912. AFTER THE STRIKE.

Although the public will greatly appreciate the restoration of the tramways service, there will be found at the back o£ most people's minds to-day a feeling of deep uneasiness. It is impossible for anybody to pretend that from the viewpoint of the city, or of the nation, the settlement is anything liko satisfactory, although it might have been worse than it is. When the settlement that had been arranged on Friday last was wrecked, the strike became a fight between the City Council and the strikers upon a point of honour—the city's honour, in which was wrapped np the city's safety. As we pointed out yesterday, the City Council had agreed to transf% the Inspector around whose position tha fight has raged, and had thereby left the tramv/aymen without any real grievance. It had insisted, however, that the formula ot the transfer should recognise the fact that the Inspector had himself offered to submit himself to this solution of the Council's difficulty. The strike leaders were not satisfied with the offer of all that the strikers desired: they insisted that it should be made clear that they had forced the city to obey their bidding. The settlement effected yesterday purports to reconcile the two opposing claims: the claim of the Union to humiliate the Council and the claim of the Council to resist humiliation. The clause sets out that the Inspector will be transferred "as originally requested by the Tramway Union, and now desired by the officer himself.' . There is a rich and tempting field here for the casuist, and we aro < not prepared to deny that if the right casuist applied hihiself to the task he might make it appear that the Council had saved its face.

We are not casuists, however, nor will the ordinary liiiin trouble himself with anything but the largo and obvious fact that the Council surrendered to the empty threat of a general strike. It allowed itself to be bluffed. A general strike cannot be successfully carried on, even by men desirous of resorting to this extreme method of fighting, unless it has behind it the motive force of a deep earnestness amongst trade unionists to defend a clearly vital principle of unionist policy, and even then it breaks down in time. In the precentease a general strike would have died Very quickly for lack of that inspiration and justification; and the strike leaders knew it. Nobody who has carefully watched th.3 progress of thu affair can huvo failed to observe the plentiful lack of substance or actuality in the rhetoric of the strike leaders) the vagueness and weakness of their references. to a general strike, and their inability to produce anything like.evidence of that "solidarity" which, if they had not been bluffing, would have shaken the whole Dominion like an earthquake. The Council was bluffed. Perhaps we should say a word hero about the amusing and pathetic "intervention" of the PituiE Minister. Why ho thrust himself upon tha Council we do not know. He was not wanted, and he did no good. No doubt, with his instinct for making mistakes, ho believed some friend or friends who may have fancied he might-somehow help his political party by acting as mediator. At all events, his twelfth-hour intervention, however it was meant, was an exceedingly quaint surprise. In fairness to him, lest those citizens who dislike the City Council's weakness in the settlement may ascribe that weakness as in part due to his intervention, it should be added that he did not influence the Council at all. We iriay dismiss him with an invitation to tell us what "principle" the Union was fighting for. He spoke of this "principle." What was it 'I

And what is the net result of the strike'? It is not easy to estimate. The whole affair originated, one must not forget, in a grievous blunder by the Council, and it is conceivable that Councillors were influenced in the negotiations by the thought that the transfer of Inspector Fuller was a proper thing in itsalf in tho interests of the tramways administration. That consideration, however, should have been superseded by the graver considerations that were raised by the strike and especially by the tramwaymen's refusal on Friday to_ accent the granting of their full original demand. Hod the Council remained firm, and declined to reopen negotiation?* after the Friday settlement, tho strike would not have lasted long, and there would have been no general strike. As it is, the Council has left it open to its employees to believe that they can always appeal successfully to force, and has done a good deal to encourage many unionists to believe that a general strike can be engineered and can l)o kept in rmnrvv as a threat for all occasions. AVc believe that the Council's mis-handling of tho trouble will expose the country to tho risk of wanton and unwarranted strikes —strikes that would not take place i f the Unions were not inspired with false ideas about the potency and value of the strike as a weapon. That is to say, there may now be a likelihood that men may strike on entirely insufficient provocation, and without that good and strong reason which hns hitherto been held by organised labour to justify a resort to force. The Council has shirked its duty of strikinga blow for industrial sanity in circumstances unusually favourable to success, for after tho Friday settlement the men had not an inch of moral or logical ground to stand upon.