TO PREVENT STRIKES.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10131, 9 January 1911, Page 4

TO PREVENT STRIKES.

Mr Semple, ex-President of the Miners' Union, alleges that the Labour Federation, which has recently ,been formed with the primary object of abolishing tlie Arbitration Court and returning' to the system of freedom of contract, is intended to , prex-ent strikes. This is tantamount to saying that the Arbitration Court has utterly failed. Tlie experience of the past twenty years is at once a contradiction to such an assertion.

However, unjust or oppressive may have been the awards of the Court, there is no gainsaying the fact that it has proved a deterrent to strikes. What would be the position if the Court were abolished? Labour, if organised, could dictate its own terms at the point of the strike bayonet, and the Dominion would speedily be in a condition of industrial unrest. The intelligent section of the labouring community is opposed to either strike or coercion. It wants a fair share of the product of labour, and to this it is justly entitled. But it would prefer exercising its power in a slow but sure political manner, than to pursuing the swift, reckless and illusionary course suggested by Mr Semple and his extremist friends. The working man should pause before throwing away the substance for the shadow..