SINISTER INFLUENCES AT WORK.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLI, Issue 10526, 2 December 1916, Page 4

SINISTER INFLUENCES AT WORK.

facts came to light during the conferences that were held between the representatives of the miners and the mine-owners, and the Federal Government, which suggest that the strike was, in the words of one of the miners' representatives, "a put up job," that it was actually arranged before there was any word of the trouble between the parties to the dispute, and that it was intended, if the Referendum results favoured conscription, to paralyse the industrial life of the country by calling out miners and transport workers. .And. at the back of it all, .Mr Hughes shrewdly suspects enemy influences were at work. New South Wales, in which State the trouble first occurred, has. unfortunately, a good many men of foreign and enemy descent connected with the Labour movements, and it is thought that the responsibility for the strike rest.- largely with them. According to Sir Joseph (.mothers, the New South Wales Parliament has always been ready to concede, and has actually approved of, the bank to bank principle in connection with the eight hours day for miners. The bom.' of contention raised by the miners appears to have been the interpretation of the bank to bank clause, which they wished to have defined as meaning that work in the mines should not start until every man had reached his place in the working.,, and that the time to quit work should be that at which the men farthest removed from the pit's mouth laid down their fools to proceed on their homeward journey through the pit workings. In other words they claimed that tools should be raised for work, and "downed," tit the same moment all through the pit workings, and. as some men would require anything from 'en minutes up to half an hour or more to get to their places in tin' mine, hundreds of men would be kept marking time, with considerable loss to the mine-owners, while they were reaching their positions. New Zealanders may congraulate themselves that they have been spared the trouble, worry and loss that has befallen Australia over the great coal strike, which most people are now agreed should never have taken place, especially as the dispute was before the Arbitration Court, and would probably have reached an amicable settlement had not the in en withdrawn their case and decided to go on strike. The refusal of the leaders to permit a secret ballot on the question of resuming work, adds colour to the presumption already referred to. that sinister influences wvvi' at work to hamper the Federal Government in its war arrangements.