THE AFTERMATH.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1358, 8 February 1912, Page 4

THE AFTERMATH.

Outside Wellington thorc appears tiu be little dissent from our opinion, which is shared by our evening contemporary, that the City Council bought the. temporary tramways peace at a heavy price—the price lieing the desertion of an essential principle, of city government and the encouragement of organised labour to break away from the restraints of justice and order. We are uot inclined to go so far as our contemporary in thc anticipation of an early and disastrous fruit for the City Council's unnecessary surrender to the strike leaders' demand that it should go upon its knees, Inn no intelligent citizen can any longer feel secure against further trouble. That a general strike could succeed which was not undertaken, with the full approval of the workers, on behalf of a really vital point of unionist doctrine, we do not believe for a moment. It is not in that direction that our largest anxiety lies. What is really a subject for deep concern is the possibility that thc integrity of municipal government is threatened, and it is only a mitigation of the real evil of the new situation that the city will not a second time permit its governors to betray its interests by submitting to demands that are unbacked either by morality or logic. Whatever intrinsic merit there may have been in the men's demand that Inspector Fuller _ should be removed to another position, there was clearly none in their further demand, when the Council had conceded the original one, that the Council should go upon its knees in making its offering. That the agitators have built l<ll7o hopes upon their success in persuading the tramwaymen to make a new quarrel out of the formula of settlement is evident from the extraordinary statement of Mr. W. T. Young, the chairmanof the late Strike Committee, that if legal proceedings are instituted against the tramwaymen the tramway service will again be suspended. Most people are thoroughly aware that the weight of public opinion, not only in Wellington, but in other parts of the country, was so strongly against the strike, that had thc City Council not failed miserably to discharge its trust, the trouble would have ended with a victory for good city government. Such a victory would not have meant a defeat of the tramwaymen as tramwaymen, since their rights were at no stage imperilled or attacked. . It would have meant defeat only for the agitators who live by stimulating industrial disorder, who really care little for thc workers' best interests, who may draw their salaries during strikes even when the wives and children of the strikers go hungry, who, in short, are the worst enemies of the honest workman. The public will not tolerate any further interference with it by thc agitators. Mis. Young declares that if he is prosecuted he will probably suspend the tramways service by having every tramway employee subpoenaed. It would be absurd to attach any importance to the evident desire of this man to . manufacture a kind of notoriety for himself. Whatever may happen to him, the tram;, will not stop for his sake. His threat, like his earlier threat that J'iie Dominion would be prevented from publishing in the event of an extended strike, is of course quite contemptible, but it is significant for the fresh light which it throws upon the methods of the men into whose hands organised labour has committed its fortunes. Our own opinion of the strike leaders was, and is, that if a general strike had really begun, these gentlemen would nave bolted under the bed and remained there until the trouble was. over. The tramwaymen may disagree with us; but we shall be surprised if they are not in their hearts annoyed at Mr. Young's suggestion that he can lead them and the city by the nose. They erred grievously in going on strike; it was a disloyal as well as a lawless act; and the pul> lie thinks thc less of them for it although the piililic, like ourselves, have throughout kept in view the fact that the real subjects for reprobation are the agitators who led the men astray. Mr. Young's new attitude, and the language used by the strike leaders, language reeking of intolerance, tyranny, and a disrespect for the humblest private rights of certain named individuals ought to lead all the sensible workers to reflect upon thc damage that the loud-voiced, soft-handed agitators are doing to their cause. Thc average unionist is a decent and fair-minded citizen. In the hands of such leaders as the unionists now possess, he appears k> be the very opposite; and in his quiet moments ho must realise this.