WAIHI METHODS.

Dominion, Volume 7, Issue 1904, 12 November 1913, Page 6

WAIHI METHODS.

Most people must have been struck with the similarity of the methods of the strike leaders in the present trouble to those they practised in the disastrous Waihi strike. Disastrous of course from the point of view of the Federation, of Labour. It is the same foolish and futile idea that they can win tho battle if they can shout "victory" loud enough even when it is plain to every observer that they are on the verge of a decisive defeat. People have not forgotten how the strike leaders at Waihi talked with the greatest assurance about trump cards, and persisted that the employers had been, routed almost up to the very moment when the campaign collapsed with the sudden blow that completely smashed the power of the Federation in tho Waihi district. The workers were deceived in the most cruel and barefaced way, and many of thero really believed that their leaders were about to make some clever, move which would checkmate the other side and bring the employers to their knees. But the event showed that it was all sheer bluff, and the strike leaders, when they saw the ga-nw was up, left the victims of their 'blundering leadership in a Most unhappy plight and sought new spheres for their revolutionary activities.- At the present time the Federation organisers are fighting a much bigger battle, and there is every indication that- their defeat will be still more decisive. They are fighting tho public of New Zealand. It unionism thcy > are fighting for, but they are battling with all their might for tho maintenance of tlio industrial tyranny they haws been endeavouring to establish in New Zealand. The mysterious references to "trump cards" and the like have become a matter for general derision, and even their own followers are no longer deluded by such childish bluster, but unfortunately lack leaders to show them a way out of .their difficulties.