Hokitika Guardian and Evening Star TUESDAY AUGUST 21st. 1917. THE FEDERAL STRIKE.

Hokitika Guardian, 21 August 1917, Page 2

Hokitika Guardian and Evening Star TUESDAY AUGUST 21st. 1917. THE FEDERAL STRIKE.

1 The message from Melbourne published yesterday indicating that all business in the capital city of Victoria naa oo«u stopped by the strikers, evidences the fact that the strike lias become a Federal one, or extending at all events over the greater part of the Commonwealth. The news is necessarily meagre, not to say almost nil, because of tho censorship, but the fact that the 'New Zealand steamesr are being withdrawn from the Australian trade shows the gravity of the situation. It would appear that not satisheu with the world-war now in progress, a large section of the Australian public «*re prepared to make war upon themselves. From what little can be gleaned trio position in Sydney and other large centres of population is serious, "and will be more serious still. In fact, things will have to bo very much worse before they can be better. Tho authorities are not disposed to capitulate to the strikers who began to seek control and direct the business of State owned concerns. Herb, again, is another example of tho futility of public ownership, if tho management is to at the behest of tho employees. Tt is another case of miscarriage of Socialism, and awakens the people to the failure of the panacea so often proposed j to counteract the 'ills of private ownership. The world might draw a somewhat similar lesson from what is ha opening in Ttuxsia, hut the theorist will always die hard, and the lesson will take a long time to assimula.te in the mins of thosestraining after the ideals of Socialism. As regards tho Federal strike we cannot do hotter than quote tho “Bulletin’s” summary of the situation. That authority will be aocepted as an impartial critic, and its statements on the matter are illuminating, showing as they do, that all tjhe sanity has not gone out of the labour olemenV in jlustralia-—which

fact gives some hope for both practical and favourable results from the present industrial conflict in the Commonwealth. Here follows the comment of the Sydney weekly we have referred to :—“The strike is just plain social sabotage. The men who Went on strike had not even the excuse of possessing a tangible grievance. They were not seeking the redress of any wrong. Stating the case for themselves, the only justification they could produce was an “assertion that the time-cards would lead to grievances in the future. Asked to prove, this they declined the invtation. Asked to give the system a trial and produce the grievances for inspection when they arrived, they declined some more. They simply insisted on denying the right of their own department to institute a change of internal management, and on ay sorting their own right to either have their own way or their own way or to deal out stoush to the community. On the basis of the strikers’ case not being bogus, all this meant that a crowd of rebels was trying to browbeat the state into submission through fear. On the basis of the strike being a machinemade disturbance, it meant that several thousand men had been prepared to blindly follow their jumbucks wherever a coterie of disgruntled wirepullers choso to lead them. In either case it meant that the public peace and convenience were made the sport of a truculent, intolerant push. If public ownership of utilities common to the general citizenship cannot save the people from assaults liko this, where in the name of common sense are the advantages of the experiment to be looked for p This paper does not know, and has a suspicion that no one else knows. What it does knowis that every strike makes a mockery of everything the Labour movement and industrial unionism has stood for in the past, and turns into jest the whole superstructure of Labour legislation a*nd administration. TJconoraic problems of a character the population has never oven dreamed about, are in tho making. Is there anyone who imagines that these will he mt and dealt with by the maintenance of such industrial conditions as are prevalent to-day? It is very doubtful, for these conditions are a sham from top to bottom, and the Labour movement is rapidly’ becoming a sham too. As it is to-day it stands for one thing only—bashing a public which earns hostility’ by leaving itself open to attack. No State ever stood that sort of thing Indefinitely, and Australia will not, because Australia' has to live.”