"A DOUBTFUL BOON."

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8392, 4 April 1907, Page 6

"A DOUBTFUL BOON."

+■ — INDUSTRIAL ARBITRATION IN NEW ZEALAND. (From Our London Correspondent.) LONDON, February 16. In the Daily Chronicle of February 2nd appears an article by Mr J. Ramsay Macdonald, entitled, "A Doubtful Boon," and referring to industrial arbitration in your colony. Mr Macdonald speaks of the Arbitration Act as a failure to effect all that its original promoters hoped for, and in the course of his arguments, he points out that though the workers have succeeded in getting wages up eight and a half per cent., the rise has been followed by a rise in the price of provisions and rent to the tune of 25 to 50 per cent. The writer concludes in the following words: "My own conclusion is that New Zealand, having cut out for herself a path by Arbitration Acts would be foolish to turn back. She should adapt her future legislation to her past experiments. But, on the other hand, these experiments have failed so signally to bring her to the heart of her labour problems that we need have no desire to copy them. Mr Tregear, the most valiant of all the defenders of these Acts, their real father, and the most devoted friend that labour has in New Zealand, has written, 'We have barely touched the fringe of the soiled economic garment.' Moreover, the New Zealand trade unionists are just beginning to consider the advisability of forming a Labour party like our own, because they suffer from every economic evil which troubles us. Is not that enough?"