LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 265, 1 August 1908, Page 7

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.

ARBITRATION AS A CURE FOR STRIKES. Sir, —Mr. - Edward Reeves, in advocating, compulsory arbitration as a euro for strikes, 'does not seom'to realiso tho futility of any such attempt. Ho says- the country should compel the worker to obey any award under penalty of imprisonment. Can we do so? Suppose, for instance, tho proposed organisation of workers took place. by which all tho Unionists from Auckland to tho Bluff came out in defiance of an award. How would • Mr. Edward Reeves deal with them? How would he arrest themp and where would ho incarcerato them ? Such a remedy is absolutely impossible. ••-It is. a question whether any cure can be found for tho conflict botween capital and labour, but it cortainly cannot bo found in any form of compulsion. You can compel an employor to obey an award unless all his • follow employers go on strike, but you have absolutely no method t of compelling the employee. A .few years ago Mr.. John Maegregor,' of Puncdin, pointed out just how compulsory arbitration would fail. ' He was denounced, by the workers and called a hidebound Tory because ho • dared to honestly say. what was unpopular at the time. The broak-down ha's come just as he prophesied, and in exactly the manner in which ho predicted it, and Dr. Findlay'3 speech the other .day rang full of tho same arguments so ably' stated by Mr.-Macgregor. • Whatever can bo accomplished by wages .-boards - and' conciliation nothing, can come of, ■ compulsion but failure. No country, for instance, would tolerate putting bread-winners in gaol because tlie.v struck - against conditions they considered inimical to their own and their families' welfare. In the past too.ihuch reliance has been placed on tho State and Stat'o interference. In tho days of Seddonism the Prime /Minister was regarded as a supremo power from whose bene.ficient hands an. admiring multitude .could be made happy'and comfortable in soriio miraculous ■ manner not understood, but bolioved. Like all crude theories this ono has melted beforo the fierce light of practical experience, and our country- is slowly but surely beginning to seo that we must have not more, but much less, State interference; and that individualism must ■be encouraged, and . natural laws allowed their truo operation.—l am, etc., LIBERAL. July 27. THE LABOUR CONFERENCE. - ' Sir, —So the Conference is over. Tho other day I was reading your report, of the meeting, and was, so deeply interested that I went to sleep over it, and I had a dream. I dreamt ;that your reporter went. to.sleep over it, too, and.'that lie-missed tho following resolutions. At any rate, I could not find them in yonr report:'— 1 ' "' '-' That not less than two workers can form a XJiiion.- Carried unanimously. _ ; '"That Mr. M'Laren be appointed chief Judge of the. Court... Carried unanimously. "That in future the day's labour be four hours. Carried unanimously. "That it be an instruction to tho Government to purchase all four to six-roomed houses in tho four large centres, and let them to workers at a pepper-corn rental. Carriod 'unanimously.*

j\ "" That. ail electoral, districts bo abolished, and rolls cancelled, and new rolls propared of I workers only. Carried unanimously. , '"That this conference insists on the Electoral Act being so amended as to provido that workers only aro oligible. to sit in both Houses -.Carried unanimously. '.'"That this Conference demands that the | liw "'shall' bo so amended as to-make it a ;criminal offcnco for employers to take, on non'strikers in the event oi-any Union going out "on strike.. -Carried Unanimously." ' ' Jliere ..wero many moro equally important, but, I was awakened by the baker knocking at the door; —I am, etc., . HORNY HAND. . ;July 23, 1933. _____ _ • ...