The Manawatu Herald. Tuesday, May 27th., 1913. HOW LABOUR HITS LABOUR.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXV, Issue 1101, 27 May 1913, Page 2

The Manawatu Herald. Tuesday, May 27th., 1913. HOW LABOUR HITS LABOUR.

It is a wise striker (says the Sydney Daily Telegraph) that knows who will suffer when he lays down his tools. The blow he aimed at his employer may hurt also, not merely the general public, which, of course has no rights, but his own fellow-unionist. An example of this kind of thing is going on just now. The South Coast miners, who stayed out so long with so little apparent cause, took no account ot the fact that their ceasing work would take the bread out of the mouth of sympathisers hundreds of miles off. But it has ; the mines at Cobar have been forced to close down because of a failure in their coke supply, due to the South Coast strike. Hundreds of men away In the north-west have become involuntary, if not unwilling, partners in the industrial trouble of the Ulawarra. Apparently the Cobar miners will remain out of work for some time. The Minister for Mines, Mr Eddeu, has done his best to see that the railway authorities shall send the coke to Cobar as soon as ever it is ready for the trucks, but nothing more can be done. It certainly is, as Mr Edden says, a very great pity. But so are many other ill-effects that strikes bring constantly upon quite innocent people and little children who will not for a long while be old enough to know whom to blame. The industrial activities of the whole community are so related that an interruption anywhere is bound not only to add a little to the general ill-effect that often escapes all but the statistician’s notice, though it mounts and mounts, but also to cause trouble to crop up here and there in most unexpected places. .