The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE. MONDAY, DECEMBER 20, 1920. THE OHUTU STRIKE.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume XII, Issue 3657, 20 December 1920, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE.

MONDAY, DECEMBER 20, 1920. THE OHUTU STRIKE.

With which is incorporated "The Taihape Post and Wainiarino Newe ?'

In Saturday's issue of this journal was (published a two column history of the two year old King Country Sawmill and Timber Workers' Union. It® expressed purpose was to correct misleading impressions our leading article of the previous evening would doubtlessly make on the public mind. We understand this to mean that in the article in question we made statements which were misleading If that is intended we need ' only refer our readers to the letter accusing us of misleading the public to prove the cqrrectness of everything we stated. This journal has no quarrel with the Box Co. men, 'but it is solicitous for their welfare and it will be found by experience, however far the matter is probed, that our statments and contentions will be verified. Nothing we stated is denied by v the Box Mill Employees' representative; he does try to put rather a different complexion upon what we stated about an award that was) made late in August last, but in that he leaves no doubt about the absolute truth of references we made. Men are surely not so simple as to im. agine that after scorning to register their union under'the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, they are morally or legally entitled to argue their case in the Courts established under the Act. It was an administrative blunder for the secretary of the tjnion to endeavour to appear in a Court in which his Union had expressed their no.confid.. ence'by jref using registration, iunder the Act; and the rcfusel of the Judge to allow anything of that kind was.cer tainly no injustice. If the Union desires to be represented in the Court there is the way by which all other industrial unions have entered. We think it will be generally conceded tha* ! conditions of work do not differentiate in little districts contiguous to each other' sufficiently to warrant separate Courts and separate awards for each body of men who choose to form their own union, apart from others in the same industry. Appearance in the Arbitration Court was responsible for the impressions getting abroad that the Union had some other motive for not registering under the Act than its unsuitability for dealing with the case. Workmen mast not get the impression that they are the only Sufferers from what appears unjust citation; this journal-has much greater ,cause to complain in this respect, but ..commonsense and, common justice •leave no doubt about the imperative necessit for awards being ' made which press and operate as equally as it is possible to make them. No great reform; no great good ever came that ytfid not cause misfortune to some few individuals, and . at a time when trace, commerce, shipping, and labour are involved in a frenzied scuffle, each section endeavouring to secure an unfair proportion of the fruits of men's vision is so blunred that they are incapaable of seeing the industrial situation in its natural perspective. What is being here stated must not be taken as a reply to •what the King Country Sawmill and Timber Workersf Union representastated in his history of the Union. There was nothing therein to reply to except the statement that the article on the Ohutu Strike in Friday's issue was misleading, but as no misstatement of fact has been pointed out it must be concluded that the writer did not mean quite what he said. We do, however, object to the inference in the concluding paragraph that we are factiously opposed to lab Ou r? or, perhaps, more conrectly, to the Ohutu Box -Mill men that is not the case. We did not state, or suggest, that the men were "led by the nose v therefore we insulted nobody's intelligence. If wild men would refrain from making wild statements confine themselves to temperate language in controversy above suspicion, the world's troubles would easily be reduced by one-half.