PREFERENCE TO UNIONISTS. Another Sad Blow.

Free Lance, Volume VI, Issue 272, 16 September 1905, Page 6

PREFERENCE TO UNIONISTS. Another Sad Blow.

A STORY about the "Big Stick" comes from America. A nonunionist bootmaker was quietly engaged earning his living. What right had a non-unionist to do anything so awful ? A union leader, finding a man earning a living without any authority from him to do so, got him discharged. The nonunionist might have gone away and starved himself and his family. He could not have got another job' — if the union leader liked to go ahead with the starvation business. • • • But, the man didn't knuckle down and starve. Like a Sydney carter recently, he sued to recover damages, and got them ! The court held that he- had a right to work, and a right to live. It said the unions had no right to drive non-unionists out of employment. we don't think a majority of unionists in America, or Australia, or New Zealand are callous i enough to desire starvation for a man because he is a non-unionist. It is inhuman. But, we do think that 'in the ranks of labour there are men who hold positions which they abuse in order to exercise a power they have no right to possess. « • • The ( Federal High Court laughed at the union officials who held that it was right and proper to forbid a carter to work because he was a nonunionist, and the Massachusettsi Supreme Court, as we have seen, viewed the matter similarly. Labour people in New Zealand have strenuously fought for preference ; to unionists, and have consequently laid down the theory that non-unionists shall starve — or become unionists. This !is, of course, coercion, and coercion is not democracy. * * • Non-unionists may be "cranks" not to become unionists, but "cranks" are not prohibited by law from earning a living, and no court of sensible men will ever hold witn such a ridiculous theory. Employers used to entirely control labour. This was ,wrong. The labour people saw this, and employers control it less. But, when labour desires not only to control employers and labourers too, level-headed people who have a strong repugnance to tyranny of any sort are apt to smile, and say : "Thus far and no further."