The Daily News. FRIDAY, DECEMBER 13, 1912. STRIKE METHODS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 177, 13 December 1912, Page 4

The Daily News. FRIDAY, DECEMBER 13, 1912. STRIKE METHODS.

Great Britain's long-drawn-out maritime j strike has hardly come to a close before shp is faced with an industrial disturb' ance in her other chief field of transport. Our cablegrams to-day are not reassuring where the railway strike at Home is concerned, and we cannot but recognise the extraordinary similarity between the conflict in the Old Land and that which so recently Caused such a commotion in our own country, at Waihi. That the drinking habits of a locomotive engine-driver are no concern of the travelling public is an utterly indefensible assumption; yet this is not only asserted by an English railway union, but has been made the basis of an extensive strike. The extension'of the strike appears to have been checked to some extent by the railwaymen in other centres realising that they were fighting upon utterly untenable ground, and that the North-Eastern Railway Company would have the unanimous support of intelligent men and women in every walk of life. The noteworthy feature of the strike is that a union claims a commanding voice in the control of a great industry, without being able to control itself. This feature of industrial unrest is by no means new. On the contrary, it has been a very prominent feature in recent strikes throughout the world. The Waihi strike was a case in point, where many hundreds of men allowed themselves, as a union, to be dragged from their employment without any legitimate reason whatever, at the hysterical impulse of a few ignorant and egotistical "leaders." In England, it seems plain that the same process has been at work. "Leaders" who had not the intelligence to perceive the hopeless folly of their claim, or had not the cOurage to express an intelligent opinion when a foolish associate had made a preposterous claim, were followed blindly by a body of unionists whose stubborn loyalty to a quite unjustifiable and false principle literally meant their betrayal. Workmen have every right to discuss with the management of any industry matters which affect their interests as workmen, to request consideration of any complaint, and to ask for the redress of any grievance. But they must obviously have some conception of what is meant by "common sense," and must not expect to have the tirades of stupid but voluble agitators accepted as necessarily fundamental principles. If unions are to be instrumental for good, they must bo controlled by their thoughtful and practical members, and must cease to be merely tools in reckless and incompetent hands. We believe that this feeling is growing in industrial circles in New Zealand, and

the general "turning down" of the Red Federationists in labor circles strengthens this belief. The Waihi strike, disastrous and long-prolonged as it was, will not have been without its uses if it has impressed upon the world of labor the lesson that the employers have quite as much right to a view-point as the employees, and that the interests of the two can never be dissociated. It is useful to have the strength of a giant, but tyrannous to use it as a giant's strength, and the democracy will never win a stable place in the councils of the world until it realises that its weakness lies in its very strength.