THE GREAT HOME STRIKES.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 85, 30 September 1911, Page 6

THE GREAT HOME STRIKES.

VICTORY FOR THE WORKERS. London, August 11. A London letter is supposed to (leal with the topics of the dav in the metropolis. This 'week there has been practical I y only one subject of general eon- ! versation among the residents of the j Empire's capital—the so-called "Dock Strike." In the closing scenes of the ! great political drama at Westminster the majority of • people have taken but a I languid interest. The defeat of the Laiisdowne amendments to the "Vetoßill may be fraught with all sorts of future dangers to England and the Empire, but Londoners refused to be moved out of a placid contemplation of the fearful struggle at St. Stephens, ami their withers are entirely unwrung at what ,thc Post calls ''the death of the Lords" and "the end of the Mother of Parliaments." They knew that the fate of the Veto Hill was a foregone conclusion; the sooner or later its passage through the Lords unamended was as certain as anything in the world can be; and that all the rhetoric and letter writing of the "dic-liiirds" and "last ditchers" would have, no more effect on the ultimate fate of the measure than Canute's orders to the tide. Tile dock strike was a very different affair. Its existence and its menace were brought home to them at every turn. Its dangers were very real ami tangible, and the inconveniences born of it many and insistent. No matter your station, you could not escape them entirely. From the housewife, struggling to make ends meet 011 a few shillings ft week, to the owner of a £2OOO motor car: from the proprietor of the humble j street stall to the managing directors I of the biggest emporiums; from the owner of a solitary barge or tug to the directors of the wealthiest shipping corporation on earth—all have felt in., a greater or less degree the pinch of the strike shoe. Happily to-day there seems every reason to believe that when the sun rises to-morrow it will shine on a city at peace industrially, but many days must elapse ere the effects of the strike can be effaced, so wide are the ramifications of a temporary suspension of LOll- - transport industry. The strikers have undoubtedly scored a signal victory, for all the demands of each section have been practically conceded. Few people will grudge thorn tile concession they have wrested from the employers, but to their methods in the hour of victory grave exception is taken. Without recourse to violent methods they were the masters of the situatira, 1 so long as the several unions concerned stuck to each other, and there was no need for them to indulge in any of the coercive measures which they adopted during the last few days of the strike—f measures which entirely alienated public ' sympathy, and created such a strong feeling of resentment that the advent of soldiery to coerce the strikers has been applauded by almost everybody. 1 The (lockers' strike spread with t.h< [ rapidity of a paraffin-fed fire, developing in the course of 48 hours into a united effort on the part of all the workers in the port ol London to raise their wages and improve their condition. In magnitude the dispute became comparable to the never-to-be-forgotten fight for the "dockers' tanner" in 188(1, but instead of the simple and appealing issue 011 which the great and bitter battle was fought, the various demands of the men now concerned became lost in a maze of technicalities and trivialities. 'Many sections were involved, and each had its own peculiar demand to make. Of the justice of those demands 110 outsider could form an opinion .worth anything, for almost every point turned upon nice considerations of comparative earnings in other trades and places, suitable only for discussion before arbitrators in a position to test and compare the facts. I Broadly speaking, five separate sections gathered under the banner of the Transport Workers' Federation. The most important were the dock, wharf and canal laborers, some 20,000 strong, divided equally into two sections—those employed directly by the Port Authority 1 and those working for private firms. Between these sections there has been, ever since the 1880 strike, a difference 111 wage. Tlie "dockers' tanner" was secured for the men directly employed by the dock companies. Private firms offered 7d an hour. The present dispute began with a demand for a penny rise all round, and the adoption by the Port Authority of the private firms' practice »of paying for a dinner hour. As the re- , suit of negotiations last week tfie penny rise—from Gd to 7d—was conceded to the Port Authority men, and a corresponding rise from '7d to Sd an hour to some of those privately employed, while in the oase of others it was left to the arbitration of Sir Albert Rollit, who on Saturday gave an award in favor of the men for 8d an hour, with Is an hour for overtime. In the meantime, however, the men had refused to accept the agreement signed bv their leaders on the ground that the dinner hour pay' ment 'had been omitted, and that' sonic concessions remained subject to arbitration. Thrown over by their "followers," the men's "leaders" at. once "shouted with the crowd." .Four other classes of workers forthwith rallied to the support of the dockers—the coal porters and lightormeii. the stevedores, and the carmen, who number some 2,0,000. and whose demands were far in excess of anything employers were ready to grant. So on Saturday night, there were at least 4.),(>00 men on strike, and the trade of the Port, of London was partially paralysed. But the limits of the strike were not reached by a very long way. In the course of the next two or three days the strikers, by persuasion and coercion, had brought out thousands of laborers, carmen, and others whose work had only a remote connection with the docks, and to-day it is estimated that about 100,000 men are concerned. The paralysis of the trade of the Port of London is practically complete, and unless a settlement of the, trouble is speedily arrived at London will be starving in the midst of plenty. 0 FOODLESS LONDON'.

There are thousands of tons of foodstuffs lying in ships in the docks, meat, cheese, butter, fruit and grain—but such is the grip that the strikers have on the situation that the ships cannot be unloaded nor the goods alrcadv landed removed from quays or warehouses. The

I strikers will not even allow moat, etc., j to be removed from the up-town cold ! store, any attempt to do so being met by violent measures. The result already is that all household necessaries have run up in price to a point which dismays those of limited means and large families. Beef and mutton have risen from la to Is 6d per stone, butter has gone up 2d a pound, cheese, eggs, fruit, i vegetables and fi»h are much dearer than j a week ago, and flour has risen 5s a | sack, which means a dearer loaf. These j ! are some results of the stoppage of j ; imported supplies, kit London is face to ! j face with the danger of being to a j great extent cut off from home supplies I as well, for there are signs that the men employed in the various railway { goods yards will take advantage of the present crisis to force the hands of their : employers by striking for better pay. | If the railwaymen do so London's condi-1 tion will be parlous indeed. The strike j is affecting London in many ways. Tt has already caused a tremendous dim- : inution of vehicular traffic, and in some streets, usually choked with vans and carts, scarcely a vehicle is to be seen. Even the motor 'bin traffic has been affected, for owing to their inability to get their supplies of petrol from the docks the 'bus companies have been obliged to take off one-third of their vehicles. And if the strike continues a few more days London will be minus motor 'buses, and her supply of motor cabs will be very largely reduced, if not entirely suppressed. This will mean very serious inconvenience for the general public, but the evil will be a small . one compared to what might have been if the strikers had not listened to rea- , son in connection with the two great, ' public services without, which London ■ would become uninhabitable in a few I days—namely, the removal of refuse and the supply of water.

DANGER AVERTED. Many of the boroughs in London rety chiefly upon water transit to relieve, them of the household refuge and garbage, and at the beginning of the strike several of the contractors responsible for its removal made a strong plea with the strikers not to interfere with their work. At first the strikers refused to listen to reason. But the representatives of the sanitary authorities were able to convince them that their hostility consituted a serious menace to the public health, and it was borne in upon the. minds of the men that they themselves and their families, being in the immediate neighborhood of the wharves used for the deposition of the rubbish, would probably be, the first and most serious sufferers, so they gave way, and allowed the contractors to carry on their business. Then the Metropolitan Water Board came on the scene, and asked the strikers not to interfere with the barging of eoal to their pumping stations. Here, again, the men showed a disinclination to come to terms, but the Water Board had a most effective argument ill stock. They pointed out that unless they were allowed to get the necessary coal to keep the pumping stations fully supplied a curtailment of the water supply would be inevitable, and that, so far as the eastern section of the area was concerned, the supply could not be continued beyond the end of the week, as the coal reserves available at the stations in that area were only sufficient to keep the machinery going for three or four days. The strikers were quick to perceive that they and theirs would suffer in common with other people if the Water Board ceased, or even seriously curtailed the supply. Beyond intolerable domestic inconvenience and privation, it meant unwashed streets and evilsmelling drains, with epidemics of typhoid, diphtheria and other unpleasant scourges to follow. So the men agreed to exempt the water boards from the operations of the strike.. Thus, two great dangers were averted, but others threaten. There are in the docks a large number of vessels laden with frozen meat and all kinds of perishable! produce, and thousands of tons of foodstuff's in the docks and up-town cold stores. Much of the fruit has already gone beyond sale stage, and the rest of it, and the meat, butter, cheese, ete., is only kept from decay by means of refrigerating plants. Many of the ships are even now depleted of coal, and have to use wood and any other material at hand that will burn in order to keep their refrigerators going. Several of the ships carrying meat are said to be finding great difficulty in obtaining fuel of any sort sufficient to keep their refrigerators at work, and in one case it is said that 24 hours will see the end of her visible supply. Unless relief comes, the whole of her bjg cargo of Argentine meat will go pntridTTuid become a source of danger to the public health. Many of the cold stores at the docks and "up town" are also very scantily provided with coal, and their contents are in danger of going wrong. Even if, as seems likely, the great mass of the strikers will resume work 011 Monday, thousands of tons of foodstuffs will by that time have been transformed into a menace to health which it may take some time to remove.

SCENES OF VIOLENCE. At first the strikers were content with peaceful measures of persuasion, but during the past few days any person who lias done anything contrary to what the men consider to thok interests had stood a big chance of getting badly hurt. On Wednesday and.Thursday scores of vans were overturned by tlieni, and their goods scattered in tho roadway, Iu other cases drivers who attempted to take vans out had the (races cut and were badly man-liaiidled before the police could rescue them. In some cases mere suspicion was enough to cause the strikers to use violence. One man was thrown into the river and nearly drowned because the strikers thought he had been helping to load a union cold storage van. The water was 10f( deep, and the poor fellow couldn't swim, and it was not until lie had gone under twice that one of tho strikers went in after him and brought him to land. So pugnacious, indeed, became the strikers' attitude ih.i: I he Government thought fit to reinforce I ho police with troops, who arrived in London to-day. The fact that they are supplied with ball cartridge may or may not mean anything. It is said, however. that, as the advertisements run. "business onlv is meant": that first of all the soldiers are to release from the docks the .Armv supplies held up by the strike, and that, having accomplished

that object, they will assist to get out as much as possible of the general food supplies imprisoned there. Seeing that the strikers have now practically secured all that they struck for, it is quite probable that, whilst thousands refuse to return to work until the grievances of all sections have been settled they will be content to allow this display of force to "overawe" them, and will allow the removal of goods required for people's needs. If they do not, and the Government really mean what the. presence, of troops should mean, there will be scenes in London to-mor-row compared to which those of the past two days will seem merely irresponsible gambolling?. THE UNKNOWN QUANTITY.

By far the most interesting and also the most alarming feature of the Port of London labor dispute was undoubtedly the fact that all the sectional disputes, which are quite separate and distinct, had been entrusted to a single icominittec, under whose orders the whole body of London's transport workers operated. Before the beginning of the trouble the various unions concerned were, with the exception of the carmen, weak and disunited, and the Federation of Transport Workers, which came into nominal existence last year, had given so little proof of real power that nobody imagined for one moment that it could so suddenly develop into "The Power in the Port of London." But directly the trouble began fresh members Hocked into the separate organisations, and showed a firm resolve to stand together. A new situation at once arose. These workers, mostly unskilled and mainly casual, mocked all the theorists by suddenly adopting united and concerted methods of warfare. If this movement is not a mere flash in the pan, but has its source in a new "class consciousness," the whole Port of London—and for the matter of that any other port —may become a trade union preserve, and the casual workers acquire a bargaining power exceeding that of highly-skilled artisans. However sympathetic one may be towards labor it is impossible to view without apprehension the sudden acquisition of such power by a class of men untrained in its use, and men who have shown themselves to be entirely beyond the control of their nominal leaders. Once all sections of transport workers unite they will possess a power greater than that of any ether body of workers, and unless their leaders show greater ability in preventing future trouble than they have shown in the control of men during the present dispute, the trade of the Port of London, and all London, will lie at the mercy of the whims and passions of the dockers and their allies. The consequence of the strike will not end with the return to work. The men j have sampled the. sweets of power, and as sure as night follows day they will hanker for further tastes. ' The 'situation is not one to contemplate with equanimity. It brings home forcibly the fac.t that the real strength of trades unionism is an unknown quantity; that the accepted estimates of its scope are altogether false; ancl that it is high time special legislation was invoked to dcai with labor disputes, and new machinery for arbitration erected.