HUMBUG

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3085, 16 May 1917, Page 4

HUMBUG

The pious professions with which the spokesmen of the Miners' Federation round off the statement published to-day relating to_ the recent conference with the mine owners arc very amusing when'read in conjunction with the actual facts. "Finally," the statement concludes, "the situation that has now been reached is that tho miners desire to

settle all the matters in dispute' around the table and by intellectual method, while the owners adopt the instrument of the ultimatum and the way of the dictator." AVhoevcr framed this quaint summingup of the situation on behalf of tho miners must be possessed of a cast-iron effrontery or a distorted senso of humour. More blatant humbug it would be difficult to conceive. The "intellectual methods" of settling the matter practised by the miners have been "go-slow" methods, strikes, and a* refusal to submit the questions in dispute to the Court, If tho miners aro genuinely desirous of arriving at a just settlement on the merits and by "intellectual method" the way lias been open to them for months past, and is still' open. The mine owners have expressed their desiro to havo the full facts placed boforo the Arbitration Court, and to abide by the Court's decision, and the professing "intellectuals" of the Miners' Federation have chosen instead the industrial conflict which they protend to abhor. If tho claims of the miners for improved conditions have as little title to consideration as the stupid pretence of injured innocence and suffering virtue with which they now seek to impose on the public, then it is not surprising that the Federation should desire to avoid the, publicity of tho Arbitration Court.