AS OTHERS SEE US.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 102, 23 January 1908, Page 6

AS OTHERS SEE US.

Tiie destruction of our Parliament Buildings last month suggested to the Edinburgh' " Scotsman," which is in Scotland what "The Times" is in England, the possibility that the work of legislation in this country might be temporarily delayed. Amongst' the prospective measures announced, our Edinburghcontemporary noted : the Bill under which the ,■ Conciliation Boards are to give place to Wages Boards or Industrial Councils, and it proceeded, after discussing that measure, to sum up our industrial outlook after thirteen years' working of compulsory arbitration. : Tlie •" Scotsman, " we may say ;at once, is a hostile critic of our industrial legislation, and that fact may condemn it in the eyes of some people as a worthless critic. Sensible people, however, will not take this view. However widely they may dissent from the general arguments of an opponent, they recognise that he may say some shrewd things which it is; useful to hear. Nor is the " Scotsman " wanting in shrewdness, as this comment upon the successive variations of the Arbitration- Act will show:— , I ■

Hitherto the continual changes that have beon made in tho labour law of the Colony have beon attributed to the novelty of tho oxperimpnt . and tho necessity of "keeping the law, flexible in ordor to: meet tho continual necessities of change and growth"—to any cause, in fact, other'than failure in tho prime object of promoting genuine goodwill and friendly co-operation botweon workmen and employers.

It is quite time that the position was thus frankly faced, for the extreme admirers of the Act have been as reluctant tq admit the truth as was the peasant-guide of the priest in " Gil Bias." It will be remembered that the man described a fox which he had seen, and which, he said, was as large as a horse. The priest took occasion to let drop a remark that they were approaching a river which swallowed up any traveller who had told an untruth during the day. At intervals, as they continued the journey, the peasant brought up the question of the fox, to explain, successively,, that he remembered that it was no larger than a donkey, than -a calf, than a wolf; and, finally, as the river came in sight, he admitted that it was no larger than any other fox. The ' Scotsman " points fact that has been too little attended to in New Zealand—that in another connection the Government has shouldered a burden, the weight of which was not realised when the work of protecting and regulating labour was undertaken. An official report shows that the Labour Department, instituted in 1891 to cope with the "unemployed difficulty," has so developed and expanded that it has now, amongst many other cares, " the interests-of 75,310 factory workers and 29,141 shop assistants under its charge." Our contemporary thinks that the prospect of beneficial results from further expansion is " clouded by the fact that hitherto legislation and administration have been directed to promoting, not so much peace and fair dealing in the domain of industry, as the special interests of the workpeople, or of that section of them that are enrolled undef the banner of trades unionism." In further criticism, the " Scotsman" contends that a check in our prosperity may, and will, if recent evidences of the'temper of dissatisfied Unionists are a guide, " bring trouble not only to industry and the Labour Department, but to 'the Arbitration Court and the Legislature." The final conclusion of this critic 1 is that it is

" becoming also a practical impossibility, in the present political condition of New Zealand, to legislate, in the direction of curtailing those privileges and favours which hava been bestowed on Labour to tho wrong and injury of other classes of tha community." That this is hardly an overstatement is verj; strongly suggested by. the de*

liberate infringement by Parliament last session of the duties of the Arbitration Court. We have called attention to the " Scotsman's" article, not out' of unfriendliness to the Act, 'the Government, or anybody else, but from our conviction that the country i will profit by giving' some; attention, to ■ the verdict of unbiased observers abroad,.,