OUR SYDNEY LETTER.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume IV, Issue 512, 30 September 1890, Page 3

OUR SYDNEY LETTER.

(FROM OUB OWN COBBESFONDZNT.) Sydney, September 10. An important case has just been decided in favor of the Government. In what have come to be known as the Hiddilstone frauds, certain moneys paid in to the credit of the Registrar General were withdrawn by certain clerks of the office for their own purposes. Some of the prominent cricketing idols of the day it will be remembered were mixed up in these transactions. The Registrar, in blissful unconsciousness of what was going on, continued to draw cheoues in order to make his payments to the Treasury, and the fraud was not discovered until the account was overdrawn .66127. At this stage the Bank began to make the enquiries which it ought to have made long before, and a consequent exposure ensued, followed by several criminal trials. The important question still remained: Who should bear the loss’ The Bank naturally wished to recover from the Government, and instituted an action accordingly. But the Full Court have now decided that their remedy lies against the Ragi'trar-General, and that they have no claim against the Tieasury. The money was clearly neither paid for the Governmental theirrrqoeal nor bed it been lent to them. The Court also declared that if the Bank bad discharged their plain and manifest duty by making inquiri- ■ as soon as the overdraft began to accumulate, they would have prevented the embezzlement nt a large sum of money, and would perhaps have saved more than one person from participating in crime. From which it may be concluded that there is still justice to be obtained in the land, although the process of seeking it is well nigh prohibitive on account of its expense, tediouenese, and uncertainty. The strike as to one aspect of it, is virtually over. Even the federated unions have found that (without the exercise of lawless violence, which is inadmissible) they are powerless to atop the wheels of commerce. The non-union wool, which they were, to ••boycott” at all hazards, la being shipped under th<ir very noeea. They have inveigled numbers of unhappy unionists Into leaving their work for very inadequate Cause, and they now find that work gladly taken up by other men who have been engaged on permanent agreements. In a short time, except for the angry talk and violent action of the baser sort of those who have allowed themselves to be thus befooled, the labor difficulty will be at an end. In Japan if a man deems himself insulted, he does not “ go for ” his assailant. He goes to the quarters Of the man who bee wronged him and dieembowela himself lhers. He has the satisfaction of it fleeting that be makes a most dramatic protest against the injustice he has suffered, and that he inflicts a certain amount at odium and Inconvenience on the original aggresco". Bat tba display of petulance is perfectly futile. He loses his life, and the world goes on as before. It se ms to me that a strike, unless (like that of the London dock laborers for instance) it is on a wellunderstood issue that carries the effective and practical sympathy of the public with it, is the “harpy despatch,” the Japanese selfimmolation, of the working o'a’ses. The work which they disdainfully throw up, hundreds of their fess fortunate fellow men

are glad to take up. They go out, and the others go in. All that they gain (and in thia they have the advantage of the Japanese) # lesson in experience by which it is to be hoped they will profit. If the ruffians who are now employing their lungs and th ir strength In howling at free laborers and otherwise maltreating them, were to turn the force of their execration upon their own leaders they would not be ore whit the less repulsive and Cowardly than they are at present, but they would at least be attacking their real enemiet

and attacking them ia the only quarter in which they appear to be vulnerable. A strike of seamen and wharf laborers (is I wrote at the commencement of the struggle) has even less prospect of being successful than a strike of skilled laborers. In Australia nearly every other working man you meet has some time ar other been a sailor and every sailor is ex ajficio folly competent 'o handle cargo. Indeed, the employment of wharf laborers at Other than terminal ports is a refinement of modern 'civilisation nsorled to on account of the feverish push and hurry of business. If the seamen and wharf laborers were a highly skilled Clara (like engineers for instance) who could not be replaced, their project of dictating terms to their fellow Citizens might have a little more prospect of an ignoble success. But at present their attitude is as silly as their claims are extortiona'e and indefensible. Many of them are awaking to this view of the case, and would very gladly return to their work if they were not deterred by the fear of ill-treatment from the more violent spirits among their fellow*-. IJhis fear of ill-usage seems to be 'the she-1 anchor of this latest development of Unionism —if not in theory still in practice. It it were done away with, the strike so far as the great Ijody of tl;e rank and file are concerned, would ba at an end within a week. A very temperate statement of the claims of Unionism has keen published by Mr Champion,an acknowledged representative of the more advanced school of British trades unionists. So temperate indeed is it, and. in such striking contrast to the ir flimmatory and incendiary language of the labor organs, that employers generally bail it as a kind of relief, and many of them declare that they gouid frankly and freely accept the main planks of Mr Champion's platform as a basis lor negotiation, la this, however, I don't t|iipk they have exerised their usual perspicacity. It is true that Mr Champion concedes to employers the right of emp'oying whom they please, and of dismissing inefficient, idle, or unruly workmen. He also delares that the anions shoo'd not compel any employer to ask of men before engaging them whetbef they belong to the union p'f nqt. Incredible as it may appear, these rights have been almost altogether ignored in the present struggle, and the employers have fonnd themselves compelled to combine in order to maintain them. Mr Champion's ontapeken declaration came to them therefore as a great relief, so great that they overlook the fact that Mr Champion also claim a the right for all workers to refuse to handle the products of non-union labor. According to him, then, all industries are to be carried en under the threat of a universal strike Occasions for striking could not foil tq occur daily in all the great centres of labor. The moat petulant cross-grained and reckless of the workers would be the first to take advantage of them, and their fellow unionists would be put npon their honor to back them up. If such a contention is admitted there is an end to all hope of harmonious co-operation, and the state of things which would be brought in would inevitably terminate in civil war. Mr Champion, equally with the Trades and Labor Council, indulges the vain dream of exterminating the non-unionist. But be proposes tq do it in a quieter and more legal manner, and without so much shrieking and screaming of bis intentions. All history shows that it ia not in the power of one school of thought to exterminate another even by conversion. Paganism, armed with all the ruthless power of Imperial Borne, and backed by the sympathies cf the Wasses, could not exterminate Christianity, tteman Catholicism, when equally powerful, failed to exterminate Protestantism, just as ypotestapiiam iq its turn has failed to exjeymiluta scepticism. Unionism is as powerless to ex'irpitfi individualism as individualism to extiipate Unionism, and it is only beating its head against a stone wall in making the attempt. Bach has a right to live and carry ou its own work within Irf OFU limits, qnd the most obvious and necessary bf those limits ia that each Shall Cordially respect the rights aad liberty of the other.