The Daily Telegraph. FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 1890.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 5946, 26 September 1890, Page 2

The Daily Telegraph. FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 1890.

Foe some years past New Zealanders visiting Sydney have been struck by tho numbers of unemployed in that city who seek their reat every night under the open sky in tho domain. It nan only lately come to light— since the strikes—that tho reason ■why so many, apparently, able men were unable to find employment was that thoy had been shut out from the ' unions. Before the emancipation of labor, which has been happily brought about by the strike?, no one in Sydney could get work unless he bolonged to some union or another. For years back tho entrance fee to a uuion has been £5, and the attltudo of the unions to non-unionists has been "join us, beg, or die." Thus unionism in these colonies has not been established for the general amelioration of the working. classes, but for tho creation of a monopoly in ail fields of labor. The object of tho unions has buen to koop all tho work of the world in the hands of their memborn to the injury of non-unionists, and for the purpose of securing the highest rate of pay for the shortest day's work. This is,

I of course, absolutely opposed to every prin- • ciplo of unionism as known in England, and hence Mr. Champion, the representative of English unions now visiting Australia, is denounced in Melbourne as the enemy of the working man. The English unions and labor organisations iiavo always aimed at an alliance between capital and labor for their mutual benefit. The Australian unions havo aimed at tlio domination, if nofc the cJesfcrrio— tion, of capital. Let us take for example the proposal of a Mr Toomey, a sheareis' delegate, at a meeting of the Trades and

Labor Council held at Sydney. He gravely

proposed :—'• That all ebeep-ownera and others who forward their wool for shipment or otherwise, after having had to submit to

tho principles of nnionism, be liable to a penalty not exceeding 5s per owt. for each and every cwt. of wool tho property of such owner or owners who havo resisted the principles of tho federated unions of Australia, and that all moneys collected by such

means be placed to the credit of the Federated Labor Council of Australia as a compensation fund for tho purpose of supporting the federal trade societies of Australia in the event of any future strike." The motion was ruled out of order, not on account of its preposterous character, but because it should liavo boon first submitted to the executive of the Shearers' Union. If Mr Toomey had taken that precaution, his resolution would have become tho law of the land, or rather of the unions, which seeuH to amount to much about the sanio thing. It was calculated that if the resolution could have been put into effect it would have produced in New South Wales alone a sum of £100,000, and as muoh again in tho other colonies. No eueh resolution would have entered into tho brain of a unionist if tho object of unionism had been to redress grievances and improve the general status of labor. Tbo actions of all tho executive bodies of tho trade and labor organisations throughout the colonies, Now Zealand included, have conclusively shown that the statue of labor, or the betterment of workmen, has had nothing I whatever to do with the presont disputes. The Australian Federated Shearers' Unions believed that they were all powerful; that they could diotate to wool-growers, carters, merchants, ship-owners, to all othor unions, and even to the London dockers, and hence tho arrogance of their demands, and, wo may add, the impudence of all tho other organisations which were affiliated with each other. The Shearers' Unions havo now discovered, vory muoh to their cost, that they assumed a position they could not maintain. They have not succeeded in blocking a single bale of wool, nor in' stopping a aiiiglo vessel that was really wanted to sail. On tho contrary, they have opened the flood-gates of free labor till in every port t.hn places of tho strikers have been filled up, and the very word " union " stinks in tho nostrils of honest men as tho synonym of all that is tyrannical, selfish, unjust, and dishonorable.