WAR AND STRIKE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 1714, 19 May 1917, Page 2

WAR AND STRIKE.

WE are truly living in stirring times (says the N.Z. Railway Review).' This fact came home forcibly to (he railwaymen of New Zealand last month, when they were faced with the duty of carrying out the biggest "cut” in the service within our memory. Militant labour in the coal industry, choosing the most awkward time for a light, had disregarded the higher call of duly to the Empire in an effort to secure justice for itself. But the strike method always hits thousands who are no party to the dispute, and in this case the miners were dragging every section of industry into the vortex. Fortunately, after nearly three weeks of idleness, most of the miners are back at work, but we have ail uneasy feeling that this is only a patched-up truce, and that the real grievance has not been tackled. That is the ever-familiar one of the rising cost of living being out of all proportion to the modest ten per cent, war bonus which most workers, including ourselves, have had to take. The miners have too rough and ready a method of adjusting grievances. They were aiming at the profiteering classes when they downed tools, but the first people to suffer were the wageearners, particularly those in inland towns, who would have been deprived of necessaries had not a decisive step been taken to conserve railway coivl supplies for absolutely essential transport of foodstuffs. Though slower and less showy, the constitutional method of redressing grievances is more effective and permanent.