THE H.B. TRIBUNE. TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 1912. INDUSTRIAL STRIFE.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume II, Issue 45, 6 February 1912, Page 4

THE H.B. TRIBUNE. TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 1912. INDUSTRIAL STRIFE.

A glance back over a few short years < f New Zealand history will bring us to the period when this little country cf ours was hailed with lhe joyful title of ’’the land without strikes.” From press and platform were spread ci itn-Unio of those benightcu countries which had so far rctused to see the light which the Britain of the South held aloft to guide the world. We looked down with pitying condecension upon the countries which still depended upon the strike club ior a settlement, of industrial disputes, and pointed proudly to our Industrial Conciliation and Arbii rat ion Act as the panacea for all evils ot the ucilci world. For a time aU went as no rily as .a marriage bi 11 Di putc were brought into C’cuit aid ettlcd to the satisfaction ot ex civ out 1 ut the employers, and they lid no* count for much in <a < 1 untie j kdg to social and political progress. Ihe passage of time vv k d v uh 1 The Court began to qui ti< 1 the po sibility of rising wages anv and devoted its s}.. 11 < ntelhi t sanctioning’ the building up ot awards with paltry regulations and restrictions which were galling alike to the employer and employed. Then came the time when the work man found the Court cow had run dry and the vague feeling of discontfiie with the Arbitration Act ti.ok definite form and with the' approaching death of the Liberal Party comes the reversion of New Zealand to strike law. In the years while we we re playing with the Arbitration ( oiirt. however, the strike had changed its aspect largely. It came into existence again, not as wc knew it in the old days, but with the hydra-headed power of “syndicalism. ’’ Under the new form of strike innocent and guilty alike stand to suffer. Tiie strike now is not an effort by collective bargaining to secure a recognition of the rights of a section of workers by a section f employers, but an attack by organised labour, not upon capital alone, but upon the nation itself. It is attempted bv paralysing al] industry 10 bring the nation to its knees. Il is proposed under the new power <■! organised labour "to deprive 1 ! < community as a whole of the means of subsistence, and the amenties of life in order to exploit its necessities in breaking down the de'ences of capital.” How this policy of gripping the nation by the threat can prove pr< fitable in the end it is difficult to say. It brings us no nearer to first causes nor helps us to understand the problems which make for discontent. In the course of an article upon "Public Opinion an<l Industrial Unrest’’ in the "Nineteenth Century" Mr. Arthur Clay say-.: "So far from encouraging the indi pendeiice. self-reliance amt initiative of the people upon whicn

the advance of the community Ijpends, the tendency of this policy (syndicalism) is to weaken these qualities and thus to encourage the feverish discontent which is so ominous a feature of the time. It is not intended to imply that there are not food erounds tor the dissatisfaction oi wage-earners with their present position--the contrary is only too manitest. noris it intended to deprnnnte rhe existence of discontent, without which all improvements would cease : but it cannot be too stronsrlv insisted upon that the methods which wage-earners in this country now seem ready to adopt in order to secure compliance with their demands are obviously incompatible with the continued prosperity of the nation of which they are a part, and tend to injure, if not to destroy, the source from which alone any real and lasting improvement in their condition can arise.” This, it must be remembered, is written of the position as it stands at Horne, but with a variation of conditions materially in favour of the New Zealanders the principles enunciated will faithfully apply to our own industrial position. Amongst the public of this Dominion, and even more markedly so in Australia, there appears to have a voracious ahsorbtion of quack politics—economic nostrums which neither the expounders nor public have properly understood. To quote Mr. Clay once more: “One of the most discouraging features of the present situation is general failure to understand that economical factors dominate the situation. Not only workmen and their leaders, but politicans’, Socialists of all descriptions, economists with socialistic proclivities, and the benevolent public, all appear to take it for granted that the only obstacle to a re-arrangement of profits satisfactory to the wage-earning class is the greed of the employers and the imperfections our social organisation, and draw the inference that it is within the power of Parliament to remedy the trouble and to satisfy the demands of labour without destroying the trade and arresting the advance of the nation ; the unseen but insurmountable obstacles to such a solution of the difficulty, interposed by the ineradicable instincts of human nature and the inexorable laws of economy, are altogether ignored.” This is how we find ourselves to-day. From lack of a deep and thorough understanding of the invisible laws by which human life is conditioned we have created an artificial condition which is the breeding-ground of discontent, tire quagmire which promises, if we are not self-reliant and watchful, to swallow our industrial progress.