Rangitikei Advocate. TUESDAY, MARCH 19, 1907. SECOND EDITION. EDITORIAL NOTES

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXI, Issue 8767, 19 March 1907, Page 2

Rangitikei Advocate. TUESDAY, MARCH 19, 1907. SECOND EDITION. EDITORIAL NOTES

THE news that an arrangement had been arrived at between the slaughtermen and the freezing companies has been received with satisfaction all over the colony. The men have gained nearly’all they demanded with tiie exception that they will only receive 23s per 100 for freezers instead of 255, as they asked. The Arbitration Act lias been vindicated to some extent by the impositon of flues of £5 each on the men who struck, and by the decision of the Court that imprisonment would followAefnsal to pay. The settlement has, however, been made entirely by private negotiations between the two parties without any reference to the Court. We 'note that Wellington papers are making the absurd claim that though the Arbitration Act was not involved it was due to the habit of mind produced by the Ar birat ion Act that an arrangement wasjposible. As strikes have been settled all over the world for centuries by exactly the methods recently cmployed in Christchurch, it is hard to see what credit can bo given to our much advertised legislation. The new feature which was embodied in our Act was that of compulsion; wages were to bo regulated by the Court, and strikes were to be impossible. The men at Christchurch and elsewhere never even troubled to enter a claim with the Court for higher wages, or they might have bad some justification for striking on the ground of unreasonable delay in the award. They simply ignored the existence of the Court, aud knocked off work at a, time when they thought pressure could bo brought to bear on the employers. Wo therefore have to face the fact that the Act lias proved a failure, inasmuch as it has not prevented a strike aud at any time in the future when the men care to risk £5 apiece the same situation will recur. It is mere wilful blindness to pretend that because the spirit of the Act has been obeyed in the recent, settlement that that is a proof of its value. Our short ent to the settlement of industrial strife has proved a failure, and the question for the future is whether it can bo so amended as to “prove a better expedient than those in vogue in other lands. Other questions of interest to labour are in the air. The statement by the Minister of Labour that Chinese cannot bo excluded from the Unions provided they are of good character is somewhat surprising to the Labour Party, as if Chinese join the Unions aud receive the standard -wages, the chief cause of the outcry against their methods will be removed. Another point "raised by the New Zealand Times is that the ■domestic workers, about whose Union so much has been beard lately, cannot legally form a union, as domestic work cannot bo included in the definition “any trade, business, manufacture, undertaking, calling, or employment in which workers are employed.” This is a point which will have to bo settled by the Courts, as no layman can venture to decide what an Act moans or does not mean, but it is clear that we have by no means reached the final solution oij labour problems, which it was believed had already been attained.