The Daily Telegraph. TUESDAY OCTOBER 14, 1890.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 5961, 14 October 1890, Page 2

The Daily Telegraph. TUESDAY OCTOBER 14, 1890.

A wkkk or two ago our Sydney cablegrams informed n« that tho niiiiere at iiroken Hill were furious at the part their delegates hud taken at tho recont conference. Subsequently tho action of tho delegate. l ) was tally approved of at a stormy meeting, and iinally tho report of tho joint committee representing tho contending parties was adopted. From a Sydney paper wo learn that the report contained tho following clause as a part of tho basin of settlement:—" That tho Amalgamated Miners' Association of tho Banier Colonial District No. 3 agree that no question of any kind in connection with any other labor organisation .ihali form tho basis of a dispute, oply questions affecting mines and the employes to bo considered a matter on which arbitration shall bo resorted to or trouble tako place ; tho meaniug of this being that in the event of a •rades council or any labor body outside the Amalgam^' ,l ! Miners' Association of the Barrier District T»' o . 3 calling the latter out for disputes foreign to mines or to tbo men, they will refuse to come <> u t> and will not raiso such questions as between the mines and theuwolves.' . We quote this remarkable clause in full, becauao it supplies evidence that the Barrier delegates Have a keen eye to business, and because it embodiee a principle which would work wondors in tile interests of society if it : were recognised and acted upon elsowhoro. No phraso rerhaps lias been so frequently ""id within tho last few weokp as that ox- '•-- one, " the principles of tremely . ~* T * huvq bf'ou told that the unionism." » Iv . -^, w jitts-oked when principles of unionism \v w Ofliccrti' tho ship-on-ncrx .stipulated that Union should not affiliate with tho lauw unions, tho object of thu stipulation being that tho relations between tho oflicers and tho owners should not bo liable to be confused through disputes between the owners and tho mon. Tho labor unions struck not no much to help tbo oflicers as to asoert the right of all tho unions to combine to support and enforce the claims which any one of them might ', mako. It was not unionism as relating to i a single association which they undertook ' to defend, but the combination of unions and tho federation of labor. Now we find - those intelligent representatives of Broken ' Hill recognising the fact that disputes be- [

tween shearers and squatters, or quarrels between shipowners and cooks, may be foreign disputes to them, and they undortake to refuse to come out at tho shearers' or the cooks' call. Clearly, there are two kinds of unionism in the fiold. Society might continue to rub along for a few years more with the unionism of Broken Hill; but if it is to exist with the unionism of the whar Q and theeheariug sheds, it may have to change its base.