HIS STRIKE PLAN.

Maoriland Worker, Volume 1, Issue 4, 15 December 1910, Page 2 (Supplement)

HIS STRIKE PLAN.

The plan he proposed was to get possession of all the surplus coal in the market—which could easily be done in 48 hours— and to strike without warning. Two or three mines outside the combination, which had been oppressed by it, would have been under the men s control, and their output of 5000 tons a week, together with the stock of 50.000 tons in hand, would have b?er sold at an enhanced price, thus providing at least bare sinews of war for the strikers. If this could h:ive been done the employers would have recognised that they were beaten from the 'start. Nobody was so quick to recognise a money-losing position as the commercial man. HUGHES BACKS DOWN. When he heard W. M. Hughes move a resolution, pledging the wharf labourers to support the men, he felt the fight was won, and he told the miners of Newcastle so. But Hughes subsequently wanted to interview all the members of the Government to force the employers to come to a conference. Though against his will, but believing he must do so as the servant of his union, ho went with Hughes # and others as a deputation to Premier Wade. When he heard Mr. Wade advise them to go back and tell the men to go to work, or the law would take its course, he told the Premier : " The day you put that law into operation—that's the beginning of your end." (Loud applause.) And it was so. (Laughter). After three weeks, the heart of the hero failed and Hughes told the men to go back to work. He could not stand a man whose heart was like that. THE ARREST. Ne vcastle was as quiet as a religicms holiday when hs was arrested. So well did the meri behave that there was no drunkeness or obscenity, but a big force of police was sent up to arrest three little men. This was history repeating itself. In America when the trusts and combines wanted to get the men's leaders out of the way during a strike, they fomented a riot and held the men's leaders in gaol without bail. He was in the midst of an enthusiastic crowd of friends, his wife by his side, when he vas grasped like a desperate criminal. He heard around him the ominous sound—that hum which goes around a crowd when it contemplates something desperate, and he said: "For God's sake, men, don't! That's what they want. It's all right! " (Loud applause.) Had that not occurred, there would have been bloodshed, and some dead policemen, possibly some dead innocent women and children. If the miners had not done it, it would have been no fault of the criminal Wade Government. He strongly condemned the Southern mines for failing thoir Northern comrades in the hour of need, urging that if it was true to declare: "my country right or wrong," how much more patriotic and manly was it to say when one's class was in trouble: " My class, right or wrong." (Loud applause.) MISSION TO NEW ZEALAND. His mission was to consolidate portions of labour so far as one great and honourable occupation was concerned, that of the shearers, who must inevitably come in to preserve their own organisation and to save it from the deadly, damning influences of the courts. To save the life of unionism, that organisation of shearers must come into the Federation of Labour, which the miners were organising today, and the next body of men to come in must be the waterside workers. These men had the hardest and most laborious toil, and degrading conditions so far as securing employment Tv as concerned. It would be some time before the smaller unions, such as the shop assistants' came in, but when the Federation of Labour was strong enough to protect them, they could come behind it and fight for better conditions alongside men whn could assert their manhood, not by pleading to a capitalist judge for better conditions, but asserting their rights by the force of their own organisation. (Loud cheers). The resolution was adopted unanimously, with another reusing cheer for Mr. Bowling, a similar compliment to Mrs. Bowling, and a round for the New Zealand Federation of Labour.