THE STRIKE MANIA.

Taranaki Daily News, 7 May 1921, Page 4

THE STRIKE MANIA.

While the coal strike in Britain is still dragging on and causing great financial losses, as well as acute distress, the mania has spread to America, where it is expected it will cause a loss of a million dollars daily to the shipping industry. In the case of the -British miners, the original cause of the dispute was the readjustment of wages, but that Ims' given place to a political move—an out and out clash with the Government. The American trouble is also over reduced wages, but it involves a change in working conditions. This has resulted in 13,000,000 tons of American shipping being put out of action on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, and what that means can readily be imagined, while the extension of the strike to foreign-registered vessels will practically hold up the whole of the shipping trade in that part of the world. Over 150,000 seamen, engineers and firemen are already affected by this arbitrary -act, so 'that the loss in wages will be considerable, though nothing as compared with the direct and indirect consequences of the hold-up. This strike evil is one that is causing the greatest concern throughout the world; yet no combined effort is made to put an end to its existence. No more reckless waste of time and money can be conceived, and it puts back the hand of time to the cave period, when only the doctrine of might was prevalent. Pres-ent-day methods of industrial dissipation are remarkable for intense selfishness and obstinacy, together with the “stand and deliver” tactics of the footpad. It seems impossible to convince tjie malcontents that no matter what extreme action they may take over disputes it is only by negotiation that a settlement can be reached. Hence the folly of striking, which inflicts loss, not only on the guilty, but on the innocent. Common sense must be a vanishing quality, or these foolish tactics would soon come to an end.