TO DEAL WITH STRIKES

Evening Post, Volume XCIX, Issue 121, 22 May 1920, Page 5

TO DEAL WITH STRIKES

THE GREAT THIRD PARTY . s AMERICA URGES INTERVENTION. STRIKE-BREAKING IN CUBA. (FROM OCR OWN CORRESPONDENT.) LOS ANGELOS, 16th March. According to Senator Cummins, of lowa, the covenant of the League of Nations and other international relationships shrink into nothingness compared with the relation of the Government to 'Labour in industry. "Unless the people who work for a living," he said, "are well disposed towards American institutions; unless they are enabled through the compensation of their labour to become good citizens, devoted- to their country, and willing to defend it. our foreign relations will speedily disappear, I venture the prediction that the issue in the forthcoming political campaign, the result of which will chiefly determine political affiliations, will concern the relations of the Government to Labour. ■DAY OF STRIKES PAST. "Events like the coa-1 strike have born in upon roe an abiding conviction that the day of the strike in the agencies of transportation and in the basio industries of the country has passed for ever. This is not said with any want of sympathy with the great cause for which Labour is fighting. In my opinion, Labour has never received^ a.nd is not now receiving, its just share in. the division between Capital and Labour, but there must be in the very nature of things some better way to determine the diviaon than through the strike. "Difficult as the duty is, it seems to mis that ths Government must undertake the task of compelling justice to wage-earners, and of adjudicating in a fair tribunal the disputes which arise from time to tim© between employers and employees. It must declare, when the occasion arises, what wages shall be paid-,' and the working conditions that shall exist. MUST ENFORCE ITS DECISION. That is not all. In the cases in which the public welfare requires governmental jurisdiction, the Government must not only adjudicate the controversy, but. it must enforce its decision. When the Government speaks on behalf of all the ■people, its voice must be heeded and its commands respected. The employer must pay according to the decision of the .Government, and the employee must not enter into a conspiracy to nullify the decree. "I am conscious of the bitter hostility with which Labour views my suggestion, but 1 must follow the truth without fear." PUBLIC INTERVENTION AT ' HAVANA. There recently occurred in Havana, Cuba, a. strike in which the public intervened to save its own interests. This is probably unprecedented in this part of the world. Not a ship was being handled. A harbour strike is a calamity in Cuba, as tile island lives on supplies which it gets from the United States every week. It produces little besides sugar and tobacco. Foodstuffs were running low. Thous3and of pounds oj potatoes and other perishables were rotting in the docks. Millions of high-grade Havana cigars lay on the warehouse shelves. Thousands of gallons of American whisky rested in the harbour, while thousands of tourists waited anxiously for it.

In the emergency, merchants,, bankers, bookkeepers, and men of all classes went to work. Several millionaires were to be seen getting 1 an experience of manual labour. Soldiers were sent by | the Government, as well as convicts, to aid the merchants. Several thousand business men worked every day for the better part of a month, with the result that only a. little less than the normal amount of cargo was moved, and the island was saved from famine. While it was not a big strike—them was no hint of violence—the incident illustrates in dramatic fashion the fact that the three industrial units—capital, labour, and the public—are not properly co-ordinated, with the result that all three suffer and much energy is wasted. A HIGH-HANDED GOVERNMENT. ! The Cuban Government has its own way of dealing with, strikers; Recently, in order to break the railway strike, the President suspended the 'constitutional guarantees and arrested all the Labour leaders and all the idle men it could find. This manoeuvre was given credit lor breaking the strike, but some said that the. administration made a hit with' the strikers by taking them to gaol and feedJ ing them. . . Cuba is said to be entirely free. of Bolshevism. The few Spanish and Russian agitators there have met with ro success worth mentioning.