WASTING GOLDEN HOURS

Evening Post, Volume CXIX, Issue 23, 28 January 1935, Page 8

WASTING GOLDEN HOURS

Strike-deferring machinery — machinery which provides for negotiations to prevent , precipitate action—has been set up in connection with the British railways, and. an Official Wireless message states that employer, employee, and the public have great hopes that this expedient will be effective in preventing the vstrikes or lock-outs that too jpften mar a return to prosperity. In | bad times strikes are few and far between, because there are few profits to quarrel about. It is in good times that strikers are apt to push arbitration aside; and the history of both compulsory and voluntary arbitration indicates that the strategy of the economic situation at the moment has: a big influence in deciding whether methods shall be pacific or militant. One of the few prosperous industries in depression is gold mining, and the news from Western Australia shows that prosperity has brought the strike. In Kalgoorlie the miners', strike had only been in progress a few days up to January. 11, but it was then estimated that Australia had already lost £62,000 in gold production, the 6000 miners involved had lost £30,000 in wages, and the employing companies had lost £20,000 in profits; besides which, the Treasury had lost in revenue. When gold goes from £4 to £7 an ounce, the strike enters; yet every day of idleness in the gold premium period is a day lost, and a day which, if the premium subsided, would never be picked up. Ore reserves now millable, and a source of wage and profit, could cease to be cither if the price of gold fell; and who dare say that it will maintain its high figure?.