The Temuka Leader TUESDAY, MAY 20, 1890. RAILWAY EMPLOYES.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2048, 20 May 1890, Page 2

The Temuka Leader TUESDAY, MAY 20, 1890. RAILWAY EMPLOYES.

Me W. J, Edwakds, secretary to the Amalgamated Kailway Employes Society, appears tj be the right man in the right place. The way he browbeats and bullies the Commissioners, the manner in which he gives them the lie direct, the imperious tones in which he demands an answer to previous communications, and the defiance he flings at them generally shows that he is conscious of having a great power behind him, and that he is determined to speak in proportion to his strength. The Commissioners have more than their match in Mr Edwards. Compared with the bad English in which the Commissioners communications are couched Mr Edwards's terse, clear and vigorous letters make up a striking contrast. He crushes the Commissioners with sledge-hammer violence, and here we feel inclined to suggest to him to lay on the lash lighter. The Commissioners are like O'Callaghan, "on their last legs," they have disgusted the colony, and in a very short time they will be kicked out of office. They are not actually down yet, but they occupy a position in which they don't know whether they are standing on their heads or their heels, so it is almost like throwing water on a drowned rat to use severity with them now. They have no doubt in past years bullied and browbeaten, and it is very hard on them now to have to stand in the position of the biter bit. We cannot help sympathising with them in their abject, down-fallen condition, but no one can doubt that they have brought it all on themselves. No three men could have behaved more foolish than they have done, and even now confronted as they are by a powerful organisation over which they have no control they have not the good sense of making a virtue of necessity, and meeting the employes fair and square. The employes have laid before them certain proposals, and instead of giving a direct answer they evade the question, and raise side issues about honorary members, etc, They have also asked delegates from the society to go to Wellington, but the society says, " Answer our letters first." This the Commissioners have refused to do, except in appeals to the public in the shape of memoranda through Press Association. These communicatious are pronounced to be false. The first was an alarm sent out that the employes were going to strike. The Commissioners had a copy of the rules before them—from these they could see that a strike was impossible, yet they unblushmgly invented the story in the hope ©f enlisting public opinion on their side. In many other ways the circulars of the Commissioners are absolutely untrue. The course adopted by the Commissioners is idiotic. What do they hope to gain by these side appeals to the public P Cannot they see that the railway employes are masters of the situation ? Almost every employe on the railway, with the exception of managers, are in the "Union, and besides, they have federated with other Unions, so that almost all the labor forces of the colony are associated with them, What is the use in fighting them in an evasive trickery way? They are beyond the control of either the public or the Commissioners, and can only be dealt with by meeting them fair and square. But this the Commissioners are not doing; they are shifting and shuffling in a way unbecoming in them, and the ) danger is that they will carry this I

insane policy too far. They have brought the society into existence, and they are irritating it now by the way they are fencing with it. The fact is, the Commissioners have demoralised the service completely, and henceforward it will be difficult to manage the railways. In future the real managers will be the Amalgamated Soeiety of Railwey Employes, with Mr W. J. Edwards as managing direetor, superintendent, boss-in-general, or whatever he may like to call himself. This has come of retrenchment, and the idiotic Insurance Bill, which is no doubt a development of Sir Hairy Atkinson'B pet scheme of Insurance. Whatever it is the result of we are sure that the colony will have to pay for it, but it is better to do it at once than drive the employes to strike.