The Feilding Star Oroua and Kiwitea Counties' Gazette MONDAY, MAY 15, 1922. SONGS OF STRIFE.

Feilding Star, Volume XVIII, Issue 4589, 15 May 1922, Page 2

The Feilding Star Oroua and Kiwitea Counties' Gazette MONDAY, MAY 15, 1922. SONGS OF STRIFE.

Just how much of the threats of a national strike over in Australia is due to the bitterness of defeat in the recent N.S.W. elections and how much is bluff we cannot estimate. To the extremist there is also something in the argument that there can bo no loss for unemployed to go on strike! But the trouble only begins with those out of work. It ends with putting out of work as well the men who at present arc earning good wages and are in steady jobs. It is wise for the discontented in New Zealand as well as in Australia to seriously face the question. ‘Do strikes really pay tho strikers?” Take the experience of U.S.A. alone for IP2O. The Washington Government, after carefully compiling the figures of wages lost that year to men on strike, found it to be £'3,250,000 for every working day, after allowing six national holidays and 52 Sundays. The total for the year therefore was the stupendous sum of £l,000,000,000—“ there was almost enough to run the government itself oven in these times of expensive government,” as one critic put it. Four billion dollars lost in idleness, which might linvo been earned, spent on families and homes and put into circulation! In Australia, the striker seems to tako an inexplainablc sense of independence in going on strike, but if those who have been indulging in the occupation of striking, or are thinking of doing so, would take a pencil and sit down to figure out the net result with their wives, they would then be in a better position to answer to themselves tho somewhat essential question: “Does it pay ?”