MR TILLETT AND MR JUSTICE EDWARDS.

Press, Volume LV, Issue 10095, 22 July 1898, Page 6

MR TILLETT AND MR JUSTICE EDWARDS.

-♦ In the. course of an address at the Socialist Church last night Mr Ben t illett referred to the recent industrial dispu c in the engineering trade. He said he had read the Judge's interpretation, and it appeared to him that the Judge had some peculiar notions as to the bearings of the case. He said that if A were given these things B would certainly want them. He (Mr Tillett) supposed that if Judge Edwards had a divorce case before him he would say, " I will not grant you this divorce because other people will want one." (Laughter.) That would be stupid law, and it appeared to him to be equally stupid law to say that he would not grant a certain body of men an increase or alteration in the conditions of their labour because other bodies would want the same. It was poor law and certainly poor justice. The money which had been spent on the affair had been practically wasted, and also all conciliatory methods and discussion. He did not wish to speak with asnerity of the learned judge, but he did think that a man getting a screw like the judge ought to have given a better judgment. When one weighed the matter up, one was brought face to face with the fact that not only were the data supplied by the judge wrong, but the facts he quoted were wrong, and the judgment was just as wrong as the facts he quoted. When they in the Old Country heard of the labour legislation of this country they looked upon New Zealand as avoiding many of the difficulties of the Old. Land, and they looked upon the Arbitration Act as giving the right to those who were organised to ask with no uncertain voice for the discussion of their conditions, calmly and deliberately, with their employers, and failing to arrive at a decision to be able to submit them to the most effective tribunal possible. This had been done, and the result waa that the work of many months and the expenditure of much money had been wasted, and if Mr Justice Edwards's decision was a good legal one, then the Arbitration Act was a fraud and a failure. It did not seem to be fulfilling the object aimed at by its promoter, the Hon. W. P. Reeves. The judgment of Judge Edwards was wrong, for it subverted the principle of organised workmen meeting organised employers, and it would be subversive also of the best interest of the workers of the colony, and would be to the detriment of the employers. He trusted that the engineers would not calmly submit to it. If tbe judge had said that he could not recognise a minimum wage, then one might have agreed with him, but when he said he could not grant the request of the men on the conditions he had laid down, then the engineers had. just cause to fight him. Had he limited the decision to the bodies of employees who had submitted their case to him, then it could have been accepted for the time being at least, but when he laid down that everybody would have to be raised if he raised those who were making the application, that was subversive of the true principle of arbitration. He (Mr Tillet) recommended the workers to go in for a minimum wage, and not to stop until they got it.