The Daily News. MONDAY, AUGUST 14, 1911. THE LABOR WAR.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 44, 14 August 1911, Page 4

The Daily News. MONDAY, AUGUST 14, 1911. THE LABOR WAR.

It is perhaps impossible for those of ua whoso views of industry and coni' mcrce are bounded by the narrow limits of Xe\v Zealand to imagine the seriousness and extent of a great strike in .•Jiondon. We are told that one hundred thousand men are involved in this strike, alone. The old truth that "mischief is natural to the idle" is shown in the violence of a class of men who are not saints at any time, their methods of life and work being against the exhibition of the peaceable virtues. Billingsgate is world-famed for the impurity of its language and the roughness of its workers, and it is in this vicinity wherethe men whose thinking is done for them by "emancipated" workers are engaged in fighting with peculiarly thoughtlebS violence that men of all kinds indulge in when their feelings are stirred and idleness gives them the impetus to, exhibit them. The strikes in England-are a curious commentary on the endeavors of the State to ameliorate the* haTsh conditions. State provisions for the betterment of the masses have no effect in pacifying disgruntled masses. It must be presumed that the causes of the gigantic labor disturbances at Home are very deep, and that it would be absurd to characterise the action of the whole body of strikers or any t>f them as wrong. The commercial man frequently fails to see the point of view of the worker, and it is his general habit in all lands to get the most he can for the wages paid,--. The men who do the thinking for the horny-handed are not always single-souled, but they may and do show that intolerably wealthy concerns become so because of their workers. The workers' power is enormous up to a certain point—starvation point. They can disorganise the trade of the greatest mart in the world by organised effoTt; they can leave cargo undischarged and foodstuffs unhandled; and if they can carry on the campaign long enough they must win. There is no gainsaying the point. In the meantime, however, there are at a low estimate two hundred thousand other people dependent on those one hundred thousand men who .are earning no money and who are seething with hato for the people who imposed conditions that were deemed intolerable. To reason with hungry men. or women is as useful as arguing with tlie Southern Cross. The other alternative? Troops and police. Short, of agreement between master and man, company and servant, corporation and individual,, a one-sided war is waged in which constituted authority must win, leaving the bitterest taste in the moutlis of the beaten. Apart from the unthinkable distress that a great strike with violence occasions, it has its ultimate uses. It, for instance, emphasises the chief point that the master leans heavily on flic man. It shows that the interest of worker and employer arc identical and indissoluble, that there are limitations to the burden that may be put upon the one or the load that the other is asked to carry. A strike may disclose meanness masquerading as philanthropy, may pull the cloaks that are thrown over "model" industrial villages, disclose systems whereby men arc forced to truckle in order to earn larger profits for their employers, and so on. A great strike lias the useful effect of concentrating the mind of the public on the fact if their utter dependence on the humble person who fetches and carries, lumps coal, drives carts, unloads cargo and shovels dust. The public as a rule has no occasion to worry itself about its supplies or its convenienes in industrial peace time. For all it knows, the meat at Smithficld grew in the shops; it docs not concern itself for a moment as to how ten thousand tons of vegetables got to Covent Garden, or whether the fish "all alive oh!" at Billingsgate was |

nurtured iu tanks under the counter or bought from Grimsby. When, however, railway platforms are choked with fish and the Colonial Office clerk wonders why the hawker didn't visit Clapham, when ten thousand people miss their New Zealand breakfast chop, or the vegetable men are battering policemen instead of serving five thousand housewives in West Ham, it compels thought. Whether a strike is justified or no, it is inconceivably destructive, and there are no means yet contrived, nor can there ever be, of convincing great bodies of workers who have a grievance that striking is wicked. During strike periods the strikers and those dependent on them are the chief sufferers, and it is probably the thought of their impotence in the richest city in the world to keep their families from hunger that inspires them to violence. The enormous field covered by modern strikes shows conclusively that the workers intend to obtain a larger share of the wealth created by them. Although it may be necessary in the interest of public safety to fight strikers physically, neither police nor soldiers can eradicate the determination of the men who work with their hands. Latest advice is that a settlement lias been reached, and that work, in London at any rate, is to be resumed forthwith. The men .have' scored, receiving an advance of 25 ( per cent.- in their wages. This is a satisfactory ending of what j might have! proved the most disastrous strike on record..