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Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 10 April 1912, Page 2

THE TURN IN THE COAL . STRIFE. Never was a great Labour upheaval so gentle and pleasant in its inception, aad never lias there been such, a change in a few weeks. There is misery everywhere, and death rate of childhood has gone up in Manchester, 51 in the thousand, and equally in potteries, while ioid people and weak have died of cola and hunger. Black discontent like unto despair, has settled on ihe land, and the soldiers are out to protect tne weak from the strong, and to prevent the cause of industry from being hopelessly ruined by madness of hunger, goaded to violence by dishonest anarchy. For the world, the lesson is that the losses of industrial war are as the losses of tho war of weapons and men in uniform, but with this terrible difference, that whereas the lives lost in Avar, properl v so called, are at all events in the beginning, those of the picked strength of manhood, in the other sort, they are those of the babes, the children, the weak, and tho aged. Suddenly theu has the cowardly character of industrial war sprung forth into the light of day like a tremendous revelation. All tho brave talk of regaining tho striko as the weapon of manliness and self-re-spect ends in throwing the brunt of the fight on the helpless sections that are especially dependent on the care of the strong. Between sheltering, fighting men in the field behind a row of petticoats thrown forward to the front, and the industrial strike, there is in point of dastardly villianry, no difference whatever. There are subscriptions afoot, together with hysterical cries in support for the sending of immediate and large subscriptions. By all means senij the subscriptions. But do not forget the dastardliness and other abominations of the strike. Above all things keep your eye on the absolute need for utterly abolishing the ljght of strike, to thrust women, children, weaklings, and the aged to die in the line of battle —the battle that it is pretended is for the manly and the strong—the thing, the deprive ation of which is alleged to be the deprivation of courage, self-respect, and manliness. But for the saj[e of these very qualities now become the strongest reasons for the abolition of the strike right, stand firm abolition.