IF THE CLASSES WENT ON STRIKE.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume I, Issue 265, 28 October 1911, Page 2 (Supplement)

IF THE CLASSES WENT ON STRIKE.

DOCTORS LAM YERS, AND CLERGYMEN MIGHT THROW THE COUNTRY INTO A HOPELESS STATE.

ITP to now, says a London pr.pei, it J is oniy tho masses, the horny-hr-ncled son- of toil, who go on strike. The results are serious enough, ns t.-cent events have pretty conclusively *hown. But supposing the classes were io follow their example? In that .case the I'cvalis would be even more disastrous. Take the case of the clergymen, for instance. Large numbers of them are ret< riouslv underpaid. Suppose they were to strike for a “living wage,” say. in their case, £3 a week. Of course, following the example ot the ordinary striker, the higher-paid clergymen would stiike “in sympathy" with their “sweated" colleagues. The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London would “come out" equally with the curate of Little Puddleton.

NO WEDDINGS MOULD TAKE

PLACE.

MTiat would follow would be, for many people, almost too terrible to contemplate. No bell would summon tho congregation to church, for there would Le no services held. The dead would be buried in unhallowed graves. Tho dying would be deprived of the last rites ot the Church.

There would be no weddings solemnised except at registrars’ offices, and as such marriages are looked upon with extreme disfavour by practically all churchmen and churchwomen, the net result would bo that thousands of loving couples would Le compelled to postpone getting married indefinitely. Even christenings would cease to be performed, and what this would moan to religiously-minded parents, especially in eases where death threatened their unbaptised offspring, can be better imagined than described. A strike of doctors would be even worse, from one point of view, than a striko of clergymen. The sick, loft untended. would tlic first, by thousands, and later by tens of thousands and by h'indrods of thousands. Wounded mon. their hurts nncared for, would perish rniserablv. The weekly tables of mortality would go bounding up as though a pestilence had smitten the land. THE Gs. Bd. MAN ON STRIKE. Of course, such a state of things as the foregoing could never occur, because neither clergymen nor doctors would ever dream of withholding their ministrations from those needing them. Yet, as a matter of sheer, hard logic, it is not easy to see how they would bo more blameworthy in resorting to such tactics than were those strikers who only the other day tried their level best to withhold all food supplies from some millions of people.

But putting the ease of the clergymen and the doctors on one side, just try to imagine what would happen if the lawyers went on strike. At once all civil suits, or nearly all, would come to a standstill; for, even where barristvis had been briefed, they could not, in the vast majority of instances, conduct their eases without the assistance oi their solicitors.

The expense -inti inconvenience this would occasion would be enormous, and in addition vast arrears of unheard new cases would speedily accumulate, which, unless tho strike were quickly ended, would take years to overtake and work off.

In the criminal courts, too, ail would he confusion. Innocent mon, for lack of proper advocacy, would be found guilty of crimes they never committed. Guilty men would eseai-e punishment for a like i cason. Justice, in short, would be turned into a mockery and a sham. M ILLS COULD NO? BE DRAWN UP. There could be no transfers of real citate, for there would, be no one to l.rvparo the title-deeds. This would mean that all buying and selling of houses would ci ase and soon all building would stem too, lor building lots could not be bought. The man who had put off making his will unt'l the last, moment would find himself unable now to devise his propel ty as he wanted io, with the qnite conceivable result that those near ami dear to him woultl suffer cruelly.

It would be the same thing all round if the classes went on strike; inemivenionce and danger would ensue, far surpassing anything that Ims so far followed any. strike of the masses. For - instance, a strike of the officers of the Army and Navy, were such a tiling conceivable, would leave Britain at the mercy of the first foreign power who chose to attack us-. Even a strike of bank clerks, assuming it to be a general one, would result in all trade and business coming automatically to a standstill. Both tit home and abroad our nici cantile system would bo smitten with and most probably a panic would be started, that, in its intensity and magnitude, would altogether dwarf all previous financial disasters of the kind.