A THREAT AGAINST STATE CONTROL.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 11590, 22 May 1903, Page 4

A THREAT AGAINST STATE CONTROL.

The Victorian railway strike having ended, and the Strike Bill, which is to make any future rebellion by Government employees against the State extremely improbable, having passed, there is little use in speculating as to what might have happened had tho men gained the day. Yet there is one feature of the brief straggle to which the "Ago" drew attention, aiiid whieji it is well should be borne in mind by the advocates of general State control. If the strike had proved successful, and the servants of the public had become ite masters, State control of the public services would have been made a mere idle name. If the railway servants were to bo allowed to strike for what they considered their rights in one respect, they could strike for others, such as an inoijoase in pay, and the convenience of the travelling public and tie operations of business houses would be at tho mercy of dissatisfied railway hands. If the railway men could strike, there would be nothing to prevent tho police doing the same, if a sufficient number felt aggrieved at their treatment, and the helpless community would be handed over to the mercy of the criminal olosses. The Post and Telegraph officers might go out on strike, and clog the commerce of the country; even the State school teachers might "hang up" the education of the children for an indefinite time by the same course of action. It sounds absurd and improbable in the extreme, yet it is only the logical sequence of any argument that the employees of the State stand on the same footing as do the employees of private firms. If this were admitted, the death-knell of State control of any enterprise affecting the comfort and well-being of Che whole community would be sounded, ajid we should be on the borders of revolution and anarchy. Tbo attitude adopted by Mr. Irvine, the Premier of Victoria, may have appeared to some to be uncompromising, but he aoted throughout on the conviction that he was not dealing with a strike arising out of a trade dispute, but with flat rebellion against the authority of the Stato by a number of its servants, and if orderly government was to be upheld, that rebellion had to be crushed. By acting as he did, and as perhaps no other Premier in Australia would have had the courage to act, he saved the situation, and placed the State more firmly than ever in the position of supremo authority, from which the strikers had endeavoured to drag it. In these colonies, of, course, the State is only another name for the "will of the people." In other words, Mr. Irvine rescued democracy from the most. deadJy attack that has yet been levelled against it in these Southern lands. Meanwhile, the Victorian strikers have furnished the- strongest argument that has yet been adduced against tho further extension of the principle of State control to industrial undertakings. It is,evident that we 'have only to create a sufficient number of State "sen-ante" to constitute them in effect our masters, whether we like it or not.