THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. FRIDAY, AUGUST 28, 1908. SLIGHTLY CONTRADICTORY.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9177, 28 August 1908, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. FRIDAY, AUGUST 28, 1908. SLIGHTLY CONTRADICTORY.

In an editorial in the latest issue of the "Mercantile-Gazette** it is sought to justify the decisioni of the Arbitration Court im the Canterbury farm labourers' dispute. After discussing the question) at length, the paper ini question sagely remarks, "No one who is accustomed to look below the surface could possibly come to any other conclusion. To frame an award regulating the conditions* of employment of those engaged in a manufacturing industry is easy, because the output, and what it will sell for, can be calculated with reasonable certainty, and the Court can estimate what proportion of the gross value the employers produce should be allocated to them, . but who can predict what next year's | crops will briag?" To show the fallacy of distinguishing, in the matter of making awards, between manufacturing and agricultural industries would be easy, but the paper quoted does so itself, and somewhat naively, albeit indirectly. In another article, headed "The Hemp Market," in the same issue, it remarks, "In the natural course of things the New Zealand hemp millers should be setting their machinery in motion next month, and it is a question how many of them will be able to face the position in view of the set back in values." Now this is surely a curioua observation when we consider that "regulating the conditions of employment of those engaged in a manufacturing industry is easy, because the output"—and mark you—"what it will sell for, can be calculated with reasonable certainty." We fear that

i a good many of the contributions to the much vexed question of arbitration are about as sapient as those we have referred to. But in the sentences under notice there is one point that is, perhaps, worth a brief comment, and that is the positive statement that "the Court can estimate (and it is implied that it i 3 the custom of the Court to do so) what proportion of the gross value the employers produce should be allocated to them." It certainly has been contended by the Trades and Labour Council that employees should share in profits, but, so far as we know, the Court has always refused to base awards upon such a doctrine, on the ground that if employees wished to share profits, they should be prepaid to bear a proportion of losses when they occur. Many of the manufacturing industries in this country are in a struggling condition, and there is no certainty whatever as to favourable conditions prevailing in the future. If the conditions attaching to such firmly and widely established industries as our agricultural and pastoral industries are so uncertain that it would be highly injudicious to make any award, then surely the same argument can be used with equal, if not greater, force jn connection with our manufacturing industries. The fact of the matter is that the whole system of arbitration requires most drastic reform—and such reform is necessary in the interests cf both employers and employees.