THE COAL STRIKE

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 2942, 30 November 1916, Page 4

THE COAL STRIKE

That portion of the New Zealand public which is capable of coming to an unbiased judgment on industrial matters has by this time; no doubt made a shrewd guess at what is behind the Australian coal strike The real quarrel which the Australian public has with the minors is not on the question of the Tightness or wrongness of their claims, buo that they should have deliberately paralysed the industrial activities of the country at such a crisis in the history of the nation. The lamentable thing about tho business ,15 that the parties are still quibbling. The Australian Metropolitan •Press, of course, has argued rho matter from various points of view, though all condemn the unseasonableness of the fight. We notice a c "" ou . s divergence of opinion in the editorial columns of the Melbourne Age and Argus on the merits of the dispute which is worth quoting: i j A f to J ho merits of the dispute which h S, ta th t a PP eal to f °™, i.e., tothe strike or lookout, whichever it may bo " said tho "Age" "it is no private citizens present business to pass judgment seeing that tho leaders of both sfdes have agreed that the case should bo remitted to the Arbitration Court. Wo may permissibly remark, however that nothing transpired at tho conference capable of supporting the view that the miners made demands on the owners of a character to revolt reason, or that tho conduct of tho owners in resisting their domands was one whit more unreasonable than the conduct of the miners in resisting the counter claims of tho owners. What is abundantly plain is that there was a most regrettable lack of tho spirit of give and tako on both sides, and that each side was obsessed with a blind faith in the justice of its cause. The Argus, of the same date, November 20, goes deeper into the matter, and presents the case in a different light. It says: "Those who have read tho reports 0 f the proceedings in Court awt in the conference over which' Mr. Hughes prosided must naturally wonder why tho miners struck work at all. Tbev were not downtroddon, nor underpaid, nor overworked. They were earning up to M 7s. 7d. a day—machinists up to £1 9s. a day—and, oven if the miners had to lose a little time from bank to bank, tliero was ample compensation in their very substantial wages. ... Wo must loot beyond tho letter of the mens claim for tho strikers' motives Tins extract from tho report of tho proceedings of tho conference on Thursday is illuminating;— Mr. Hughes: You woro producing' a commodity which, at'tho moment, is tho life blood of tho nation. Mr. Baddoloy: Why did not tho tiovernmont come in and say: 'This is a commodity which wo will control?' Mr. Hughes: That is another matter. What 1' want to get at is the resumption of work. The remark of Mr. Baddolov (one of the union presidents) certainly was 'another matter." His words betrayed tlio motivo of tho minors' oHieials. Tlio miners sirp aiming at nationalisation. Now. nationalisation is a subject' that is nneii to argument, but the means by which the minors soek to attain it are inexcusable. Theso men are prepared to throw every artisau in Australia, out of employment for an indefinite period I

because thoy do not approve of private ownership of collieries. .It is very difficult to.believe that the 20,000 men who form the. MLner.f Federation axe. of their own volition, guilty of this criminal insanity. They are being led and misled by men of -whose identity and character thousands of them are ignorant. There are people pulling the wires who are never seen on the stago with the puppets, and in the light of the known facts it is no stretch of tho imagination to conclude that enemies of the Empire are engineering the trouble/' The Argun may be right in its conclusions as to tho motive behind the strike, or it may bo wrong; but it certainly is right in a contention put forward in another part of its article to tho effect that State ownership affords no guarantee of industrial peace. We have tried it in certain directions in New Zealand, including State coal mines, and instead of promoting peace and earning the goodwill of tho worker it would seem to have quite tho opposite effect.