The Dominion. TUESDAY, AUGUST 25, 1908. UNNECESSARY EXCITEMENT.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 284, 25 August 1908, Page 4

The Dominion. TUESDAY, AUGUST 25, 1908. UNNECESSARY EXCITEMENT.

The . cxcitement that has been created in some quarters by the decision of the Arbitration Court in the case of the Canterbury farm labourers is. easy enough of explanation. Partly, it is due' to tho nervous unrest in Labour circles j partly, it proceeds from an anxiety to occupy a front seat, as it were, in tho enactment of what the critics havo hastily coneludod is a " crisis." Wo can well imagine that the people who were months behind tho fair in. recognising the significance of the Government's'interference with the Arbitration law at tho end of last year are exceedingly anxious 'to avoid a second mistake of the kind. Unfortunately, they Havo rushed out to raise the alarm at tho wrong time. There is no crisis. Tho Arbitration Court was tinder no obligation to mako an award in tho farm labourers' dispute. Its duty was merely to consider the situation rovcaled in the evidence adduced before it, aud to issue the judgment that that evidence made necessary. The public has perfect confidence in the integrity of tho Court, and will remain perfectly satisfied that the decision arrived at was thoroughly just. To complain of the failure of the Court to delivor an award is to charge tho Court with incompetence and worse. Wo have as littlo patience with those who are attempting to make the Court tho scapegoat of tho Government's sins and of the inherent badness of tho Act's principle as with the noisy agitators who are exhausting the resources of invective in their assaults upon Mr; Justice Sim.

Outside a few agitators, and certain labour organisations, no section of the public—not even, we suspcct, the farm labourers themselves—is seriously perturbed by tho Court's decision. The critics who think otherwise,' and who speak of the decision as unprecedented in character, cannot have much knowledge of tho past history of the Act. In 1901th"e Court refused to make an award in tho wool-scouring and fellmongering trades, and Me. Justice Cooper justified tho Court's decision on grounds of general

policy similar in essence to tho grounds on which the Court has now refused an award in the farm labourers' dispute., "Tho fall in the prico of wool," 110 said, " and the very critical condition of tho wool trade, presented so many difficulties to the mind of the Court, that it has decided not to fix the rate of wages for tho workers." He added that the Court had to consider tho matter from the point of view not only of tho workers and employers, but " of the whole community and tho colony at large." In 1805 tho Court rofuscd to make a new award in

certain Westland" mining industries. Again the Court " had to consider the whole position in the interests of the parties concerned; of the workmen not directly concerned, but involuntarily affected; and of the public of the colony." It could " sec no way of making an award which will not causa grave, injustice to some class of persons. . . . Such injustice as would ensue from the making of an award would either produce great discontent or would lead to results of the most injurious character to the industries affected, and probably both these consequences would ensue, with the result that, in the end, the greatest sufferers—if any distinction can be drawn — would bo the employees, or a large section of them." Here are cases on allfours with the Court's latest decision, and, excepting in Labour circles, there was no excitement, and no wild talk of " disaster " and " falling Babylijns " and all the rest of it. We could cite other cases and judgments'if further precedents are wanted. But nobody, we imagine, requires more, excepting those people who have so ludicrously mistaken the temperature of public opinion. We can refer the attempt to cxcite the public only to ignorance or to an anxiety to ascribe to the Court a result that is due to the unsoundness of the Act itself.

What is to be feared in the inflammatory articles of ■ some of our contemporaries is the effect that they may have upon the Government. ' Last year, as a result of the Denniston miners' dissatisfaction with the Court's decision, the Government assisted tho passage of an Act that over-rode the Court's award, and cut away the Court's freedom to dispense real justice.' An' attempt may bo made—if the Act is retained in an amended form—to place new fetters upon the tribunal that was set up as the only body to adjudicate in industrial disputes. Wo hold that the Act is bad at root, but while it exists we are bound to protest against every attempt to accumulate injustices under it. As for the attack which tho Labour organisations in Canterbury have so promptly made upon Mr. Justice Sim, there is little that need be said. To most people these contemptible resolutions will be-considered tributes to tho President and to the courage of the Court in allowing nothing to dissuade U' from giving a decision that seemed just to it. The people, by the way, wlio reecho Me. James Thorn in declaring that the Court has " turned tail " cannot have properly considered tho situation in which the Court found itself. Tho Court, as a matter of fact, did not turn tail, but courageously discharged a disagreeable duty.' We have said that the assaults upon Mb. Justice Sim—amounting to a charge,' not of incompetence merely, but of actual corruption—aro contemptible. But-it is surely time that the Court, in the 'interests of decency, was afforded some protection from such base allegations. If a Supreme Court Judge were assailed in the terms of the Canterbury resolutions, the offenders would promptly be called to account, not for their assault upon the Judge, bu.t for their outrage upon the body of Justice. Respect for our Courts' is required in the interests of social order, and it is just as important that'the Arbitration Court should be rcspcctcd as that any other tribunal of Justice should be guarded against contemptuous treatment by partisan citizens.