THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 28, 1912. THE WAIHI TROUBLE.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10705, 28 August 1912, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 28, 1912. THE WAIHI TROUBLE.

There are indications that the Waihi J trouble will shortly develop into a crisis. The miners having refused to surrender after sixteen weeks' cossatipn of work, the companies are i considering the question of employing I free labour. This will mean that | those who are connected with the Federation of Labour will declare aj sympathetic strike. Tho coal miners J will refuse to hew the coal, the waterside workers will decline to .handle it, and the trade of the country generally will be paralysed. It is a most unfortunate thing that the eoal-min-ers and other bread-winners should be involved in a dispute in which neither wages, hours of labour, nor other great principle is at stake. One would have thought that they would have yielded to the dictates of coinmonsense, and severed themselves from an institution that is maintained only for the purposo of promoting strife. Every branch of industry which is associated with the Federation of Labour is indirectly .responsible for the continuance of the Waihi strike, and although the dispute ha« tso far been only sectional, it is obvious that it will yet bring other branches of industry into the arena of strikedom. The outlook at the present moment is by no means reassuring. The Minister of Labour has been striving to bring about an amicable arrangement. Tho strikers, however, are determined that they will accept no compromise. They insist upon tho right of the Labour Federation to control every branch of the mining industry.. Things have arrived at such a stage that Parliament will bo compelled to intervene. The law will have to be I so amended that any person who promotes or engages in a strike will be held to have committed an offence. This is the only way to deal with those who will not listen to reason. There are, we have reason to think, hundreds of men 'affiliated to the Federation of Labour who have no sympathy with tho Waihi strike. These men, with a false potion of what they term loyalty to their comrades, are contributing to the strike

fund, and otherwiso 'assisting the strikers. Wo would appeal to theee men to rc-consider "their position. If they wore to withdraw from tho Federation, the strike would be ended in .1 day. If they continue to sacrifice themselves on the altar of Syndicalism, they will precipitate a disaster in which the workers and their families will .suffer hardships and privations which tliev do not deserve.