CONCILIATION AND ARBITRATION.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XCVI, Issue 14386, 31 May 1907, Page 6

CONCILIATION AND ARBITRATION.

We have become accustomed to .extraordinary excroiso3 in logic on tho part of employers opposed to tho industrial arbitration system, but we supposed that the workers in general had a fair understanding of its principles and effects. If Mr L. R. "Wilson, whoso letter we publish this morning, speaks for any cow idcrablo body of unionists wo shall clearly have to set out once mere on an educational campaign, similar to that which led up to •uiie para.ago of tho first Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act. Mr 'Wilson's contentions are, briefly, that the Act was passed to protect capitalists against the losses and financial risk? duo to strikes and that the benefit to

the workers was only an afterthought; that since- the Act protects tho capitalists it cannot also operate in the best interests of labour; and that the Act has failed to satisfy till© workers because it has not prevented tho increase iai the price of flour or tho advance in rents. "We confess that it had not previously occurred to us to condemn the educational system of tho colony because mercantile offices have adopted tho use of typewriters, but Mr Wilson, apparently, would have us indulge in some such logical method- of argument. The law against theft, it seems, is vicious because some men beat then* wives, and the courts of justice are a failure because grocers are making a profit on tea. With regard to the purposes for which the Act was framed we can only think that Mr Wilson was cither out of tho colony or in the kindergarten school when tho agitation was in progress. liven that, however, does not excuse his failure to acquaint himself with the facts of tho matter now. It is quite true that tho Act was designed to obviate tho necessity for ccfitiy strikes and tho disorganisation of trade. The interests of both employers and workers were certainly considered, becamso Mr W. P. Reeves and his colleagues had eenso enough to realise that if strikes wore costly to t-he employers they wore costly also to tho workers, and, above all, they were projudicial to the welfare of th© whole State. As for the Act operating almost exclusively on the side of the capitalist, we would .advLso Mr Wilson to consult some intelligent Unionist who had experience of the conditions of labour in this colony seventeen yearns ago, before he ventures to he dogmatic on the subject. It is true, of course, that the system has - not prevented tho Flour Trust from raising the' prices. It was not able to bring rain dairing th© spring and early summer and it could not prevent the shortage of the wheat supplies. But if it had; not been in operation the workers would not noav be contemplating quit© so calmly th© fact that flour is at £ll a ton. There has been a factor in the general rise of prices during recent years whioh neither the Arbitration Court nor tho Government of New Zealand could control. Mr Wilson may have read of what is oalled the "depreciation of gold." It is a matter of world-wide concern, and every country has been affected; but not every country has been able to face its consequences light-heartedly. New Zealand ha<3 been fortunate in that respect, and not the least important reason for her satisfactory position has been, the prosperity of her working community. No one who has studied tho economic position of New Zealand intelligently during the last fifteen, yeare can doubt that the Arbitration Act has operated, on tho whole, most beneficially for the workers and for tho State. "'