THE Wairarapa Age. MORNING DAILY. SAT UK DAY, MARCH 7, 1908. THE COMING STORM.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9042, 7 March 1908, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age. MORNING DAILY. SAT UK DAY, MARCH 7, 1908. THE COMING STORM.

The atmosphere in labour circles is charged with electricity, and the elements of a violent storm appear to be gathering to a head, and may burst over the dominion at any moment. Many things have been leading up to the present position of affairs. The want of firmness on the part of the authorities in the slaughtermen's strike a few months ago led to the supposition that the Arbitration Act might be defied without any very serious consequences, and since then the mutterings of discontent have been heard from labour quarters in various parts of the dominion. The thunderstorm prognosticated by these rumblings seems about to break and create an industrial cataclysm. That labour has a right to defend itself against aggression and to advance its interests in every reasonable way every fair-minded person is ready to admit; but constitutional means ought to be exhausted before anything in the nature of rebellion is attempted. It cannot be said that the hardships imposed upon labour at the present time warrants an attitude on the part of labour organisations which may bring about a fierce industrial struggle in which the non-com-batants may suffer even more severely than the parties to the dispute. Parliament meets in June, and there will soon be a legitimate opportunity to remedy such defects in the Arbitration Act as may be brought to light. Meanwhile employers and employed should content themselves with drawing attention to those defects, and loyally abide by the law until it can be amended by the Legislature. This, we regret to find, is a course of action which does not meet with the approbation of the Trades and Labour Councils and Unions, for

• hey are boldly upholding a body of men who are alleged to have defied the law. On Wednesday the Wellington Trades and Labour Council passed the following rema-kable resolution : —"That thia council expreseses its vmpathy with the seven individual unionists who were victimised by Lhe Blackball Mining Company and is of opinion that unless the Government takes proceedings against the company (1) for discrimination, and (2) for lock-out, the unions and trades councils of New Zealand should seriously consider ways and means of bringing about a just administration •>f the Arbitration Act." This is disdistinctly in the nature of a threat,and is l;obe depreciated upon all grounds. I twill certainlytentl to increase strife, and that, it would seem, is the object the Labour Council has in view. On top of the coal trouble comes the beginning of a shipping difficulty. The seamen and workers on ships are making demands which are being resisted by the ship-owners. Masters and men are now meeting in conference, and it is to be hopnd that an amicable settlement will be arrived at. The labour trouble looming upon us at the present time is sufficiently serious without the prospect of a seamen's strike.