THE END OF THE STRIKE.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXIX, Issue 14682, 13 May 1908, Page 6

THE END OF THE STRIKE.

In view of the terms upon which the Blackball strike has been settled, it is amazing that the trouble should have been continued so long. We aro bound to believe that the men were illadvised at every stage of the dispute. There was a constitutional method of ventilating their grievances and of obtaining redress, but they deliberately chose to disregard the law of the land. They cannot, by any stretch of imagination, be said to have justified the strike. They have gained no more than the Court would havo given them in the ordinary course, they have prejudiced the cause of labour throughout New Zealand, and they havo themselves suffered a heavy loss of wages. -It is true that they have provided the opponents of tho Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act with ammunition, but if their own desire was to break down the system they have signally failed. The only result of the strike has been to confirm tho people of the dominion in their loyalty to tho measure. There will havo to be amendments, and the miners' strike, coming so soon after the trouble in the meat freezing works, has strengthened the determination of the Government to improve the machinery of the law. The Government itself seems to have dealt very tenderly with the men. It has been faithful to the principle of conciliation, and the strikers received a good deal more latitude than they had any right to expect. Naturally, the Opposition newspapers have made capital out of the Government's unwillingness to proceed to extreme measures, and though we can quite appreciate the reasons for tho policy of the Premier and the Minister of Labour, we doubt whether it was wise. We trust that we shall hear no more, however, about the breakdown of the arbitration system. The Court did all that it could do and all that any Court could have done. Laws may bo devised to discourage offences and to punish offenders, but offences will still be committed, and the arbitration law can do no more than render strikes unnecessary and unprofitable. It cannot prevent agitators from inciting the workers to strike, though the Government, wo think, might fairly take steps to prosecute men whose conduct suggests that they are deliberately inciting other men to defy the law. The Blackball trouble, which was, after all, a comparatively small affair, has served one useful purpose in revealing some of the weaknesses of the existing law, and it OUffht to be regarded by the workers generally as an object lesson in tho folly of attempting to gain an advantage over the employers by unlawful means.