AS OTHERS SEE US.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIV, Issue 47, 18 October 1912, Page 4

AS OTHERS SEE US.

n a recent issue the “Sydney Morning Herald” comments on the att';ude of the Waihi strikers as follows;

—“lt is worthy of remark that the Waihi management lias always pursued a liberal and progressive policy in relation to its hands. A prolonged strike naturally gets a long way from its starting point. Leaving aside the minor matters, the real question is whether the Federation of Labour shall exercise an absolute despotism, or whether men shall have some right to the control of their own unions. The tendency to revolt from the socialist tyranny has long been plainly marked among unionists all over New Zealand, and that is no doubt one reason why the socialists want to see a general strike now; and they are very cleverly seizing on every chance episode of the strike to provoke strife. For instance, a few men have been imprisoned for strike offences, and large bodies of police have been sent up to the disturbed district during the last few weeks. There is, of course, a certain grim humour about all this. Several years ago the late Henry Demurest Lloyd wrote a book, entitled ‘A Country Without Strikes/ in which it was not merely alleged that there were no strikes, but roundly affirmed that it was impossible that there should be any. And now, after a quarter of a century of ‘advanced’ industrial legislation, the New Zealander is just where he was, and is falling back on the crudest syndicalism as far as the methods of labour are concerned. Yet in no country in the world could the experiment of the artificial control of labour and labour conditions have been made with a fairer chance of success. The truth is that there never could be any chance of success while human nature remains what it is. The net result in New Zealand of simultaneously forcing up both wages and prices has naturally been nil. The net result of the whole complex machinery of industrial arbitration was to disgust everyone with it. The net result of not being able to quarrel with your employer is simply that you quarrel with your fellow-worker. The violence at Waihi is the most ludicrous comment the arbitrationist has ever had to face. No machinery will ever be any good to men who have not the will to use it. These particular workers had the advantage of employment on a mine still worth four or five millions sterling. They had constant work, and a charming little township. Yet they would be quite content to throw it all away—for what?—the right to tyrannise over one another in the name of unionism.”