AN EXTRAORDINARY DISCOVERY.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 283, 24 August 1908, Page 6

AN EXTRAORDINARY DISCOVERY.

On Saturday last we. said all that seemed necessary in' the way of comment on tho Arbitration Court's decision in the Canterbury farm labourers' dispute. But amongst the Press criticisms of tho Court's refusal to make an award wo find a view so remarkable, of itself and for what it portends, that we must recur to tho subject onco more. A Radical newspaper in Christchurch concludes a lachrymose assault upon tho Court in tho following terms:

"But there is nothing to bo gained belabouring tho matter further. Wo rcaliso that tho Arbitration Act has suffered a gravo rovorse, almost a disaster, and wo hro anxious hot to enhanco tho danger by a single unrestrained or angry word. That tho Court itself should havo struck this bloiv is tho saddest feature of tho position."

Our contemporary has been overcome by the heated rhetoric of Mr. M'Cullough and Mr. James Thorn, and in a few days will probably realise the figure that it cuts, both in its nnbalanccd lamentations, and its gravo referonco to its self-restraint in bottling up words that would otherwise set the nation, on fire. Of more importance is the revelation of the spirit in which certain friends of the Government think of tbo present state of industrial arbitration. We believo we may say with complete safety that this is tho first occasion upon which our Christehurch contemporary has so impressively declared that a blow has been struck at the Arbitration Act.

When the Coal Mines Act Amendment Act was passed, when the Prime Minister and Mr. Millar fiod in a panic to Denniston to shoulder the Arbitration Court out of the way, when the Government refused to take action against tho Blackball strikers, when over and over again the Arbitration Act was allowed to suffer the extreme of contempt and tho Court was treated as a thing of no accountwhen blow after blow was struck at tho whole system of arbitration, this critic ncvor once admitted that such blows had boon struck by the' Government, and never once meted out to the Government its proper portion of censure. Even had this critic noted and condemned the successive shocks thus sustained by the Arbitration Act, there " would have been.no exc.usc for such a wild assertion as that now made: that by giving a certain decision, in a case which it was quite compctenti to settlej the Court has inflicted a grave, revcrsb on the Act. But that a prolonged.' acquiesconco in the indefensible policy pursued by the Government for some nine months should end in such a foolish and unjust assault upon tho Court is almost beyond criticism. The Act has certainly Buffered a grave reverse: to put it shortly, it has completely failed, and' is patently past mending, however it may be temporarily patched up. But its friends—the critic under notice is by-way of- being its spccial champion—apparently consider that it docs not fail "until the' Court delivers a judgment .with they do not agree. That the Act is not allowed to punish strikers, that, it, probably cannot punish strikers)-that it has drifted into contempt, and has become merely a second arrow' in the quiver of tradesunionism—these,' we arc to believe, are facts quite consonant with success. The public may be left to imagine tho kind of Act and the kind of Court that we should have if these friends of the Government, had their way. }