THE MINERS' STRIKE.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 2526, 18 September 1888, Page 2

THE MINERS' STRIKE.

[BY ELKCTRIC TELKUKAI'H.—COPYRIOHT. |

Syd.vky, September 14. The official pay-sheets of the last week's works" at the Newcastle collieries show that the highest wages per man per clay was 13s Gd, while the lowest was 10s 4d. The general average was lis Gd.

Our Melbourne correspondent writes as follows By the way, I must not leave out all mention of the great coal question, it being such a great factor in the present state of afFairs. "It can't be called a burning question, you know," said a prominent member of the Upper House to mo facetiously the other day, " because we shan't have any to burn. And on the other baud, you know, we can't make light of it, because we'll have no gas." Apart from this humorous aspect of the situation, however, it is becoming serious enough here in Melbourne for many of those whose daily bread depends upon their labor. The six thousand miners who have, laid down their tools in the Newcastle collieries have, caused some twenty thousand breadwinners to do the same in other walks of industry. In Melbourne alone about six thousand people arc likely to lose employment, which means a deadly blow indeed to our industrial life. Should the strike last three months (which I pray to God may not be the case), the consequences to Melbourne would be a disaster second only to an invasion of Russian warships similar to that related in " The Battle of Mordialloc." And the crushing, humiliating, shameful part of it is that the blow would (I dare not say "will") come from an outside body of irresponsible miners and mine owners. The idea awakens, in me at all events, some very serious reflections. We are accustomed to hoar about the unlimited powers of Parliament, but all the Parliaments in all Australia, if suddenly inspired with democratic rancour, would be powerless to bring on society such suddeu misery as those two Sydney meetings of mining delegates and mining masters have done. A cotiplc of unall trade meetings have marred in a week what aU the statesmen of all the colonies cannot make good in a twelvemonth. Trade organisation is a grand weapon, truly. It has tremendous and almost omnipotent power, but alas ! it works evil as well as good, and its immediate effect is to bring suffering and privation to thousands of wageearners and sons of toil. I sincerely hope and trust the strike will soon come to an end, for its effects grow every day more lethal. The well-provided weather the storm easily enough, but the thousands of bard workers, to whom being thrown out of employment means to starve, it is of them I think. Alas !

Want, worldly want, that liiinjjry, meagre fiend, Ii at their heel-:, and rinses tltem in view.