THE SEAMEN’S STRIKE.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LI, Issue 5577, 7 January 1879, Page 5

THE SEAMEN’S STRIKE.

(From tht Sydney Echo.) The following letter, forwarded for publication by the manager of the A.B.N. Company, Captain Trouton, contains some information respecting the strike which will be read with interest:— ■ “ Australian Steam Navigation Company, “Sydney, Not. 2d, 1878. “ Sir,—Permit me through the medium of your widely circulating journal to place before your many readers who ore interested some particulars relating to the coarse recently taken by seamen and firemen under engagement to serve the A.S.N. Co. The Company has numerous steamships of large tonnage employed in the commercial service of this Colony, and in connection therewith employ a vast number of men, to whom. they pay very high wages. They permanently employ not fewer than 487 ‘seamen and firemen, 306 wharf and other labourers, besides not less than 257 engineers and other mechanics, and many of these have a wife and children depending on them for support. The wages paid to seamen and firemen, including cost of victualling, is not less than from £64,000 to £70,000 a year, being at higher rates, I believe, than that paid in any other colony, or in any part of the world. “ Now, in consequence of the seamen and firemen who are under engagement to the Company having suddenly and without a moment’s notice broken their contracts and deserted their respective ships, all these people have been thrown out of work and maintenance, and great inconvenience and loss have been brought on the public at large, as well as on the many shareholders of the Company. The reason assigned for this illegal proceeding on the part of the men is that the Company hare lately introduced some Chinese seamen and firemen to bo employed in some of their ships. “ What led to the taking of tide measure by the Company is simply this Owing to the excessively high rate of wages ft very serious loss was being sustained by ships employed in certain of the Company’s lines, more especially those in which there is comfotition by ships manned by Chinese crews, t therefore become necessary to decide whether the lines in question must be abandoned and the ships employed in them laid up, or the example set by our competitors followed. If the former course were taken it was evident that a greater number of seamen, firemen, and other workmen of all classes would bo thrown out of employment and pay, and greater injury would bo done to commerce and to the public at large, and to our shareholders, than if the latter course wore followed. My Directors, therefore, naturally preferred the latter evil, and sent to China tor crews for a few of their ships employed iu tropical waters. Of course my Directors would greatly prefer to employ their own countrymen, and would very gladly pay them a high rate of wages, if in so doing it wore possible to keep the ships employed without loss: but this they find cannot bo douo in certain cases. It therefore becomes quite impossible for the Company to comply with the demands of the deserters, and to discharge the Chinese sailors and firemen they have engaged for a term of three years. . “So far as our experience goes, winch agrees with that of others, the Chinese seamen and firemen are capable, and exceedingly willing, well-conducted men, and on these points are in no respect inferior to Europeans; it therefore is moat unjust to object to them on the score of morale or disability. If men and firemen of our own nation will determine not to accept employment and the very high rate of wages the Company aic willing to give, as far as they can possibly no go without incurring loss to the shareholders, then there will be no other course open to the Directors than that of sending to China or elsewhere for other hands, except that or laying up the ships, which would be one still

1 worse for all parties concerned. But when our misguided and misled men shall have had time calmly to consider the true state of the case they, I trust, will see the mistakes they have committed, and how much injury they hare done to themselves and others in acting as they have done, and will not increase the evil by adhering to the wrong course ther have taken.” J