Capital and Labor.

Evening Star, Issue 8399, 27 December 1890, Page 2 (Supplement)

Capital and Labor.

The Commission which has recently reported on the the Grey Valley Coal Company, and the position of the industry generally in that district, necessarily devote some attention to the labor troubles. While expressing an opinion that under better administration labor associations would be productive of benefit both to the operatives and their employers, the Commissioners make the following remarks on the recent strike:—"The disastrous results apparent throughout this struggle have, in our opinion, arisen through the men giving heed to crude and deceptive teachings, and fostering amongst themselves unwise and misleading views on the respective relations between capital and labor, without really knowing their interdependence on each other, or, indeed, without having truly defined the meaning of the terms, or formed correct views of the distinctive functions which capital and labor are called upon to fulfil in the world's work. The correspondence printed in Mr Bishop's evidence, and in the appendix, between the local unions at the Grey and at the Buller and their respective mine managers, as well as other letters submitted to the Commissioners, proves the fact that the leaders of these unions, and no doubt their members also, had gradually assumed an attitude towards their employers under which it was fast beooming impossible to oarry on the necessary work of the mines, and which if persevered in must ultimately have led to the oompany refusing to accept trade contracts and to such a serious restriction of trade that many of their employes must have been thrown idle."