THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. SATURDAY, AUGUST 25, 1888.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9142, 25 August 1888, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. SATURDAY, AUGUST 25, 1888.

The die is cast,- and the miners at Newcastle, in New South Wales, have resolved to strike. Yesterday a ballot of the miners was taken to dccide whether a week's extension, of time should be granted to the masters for further negotiations, and the question was determined in the negative, and the men have been instructed to bring out their tools.' It is said that three thousand English miners have been cabled for. It must of necessity be ; a considerable time before these can be got to work, and in the meantime the oonsequences of the strike cannot fail to be serious. In these days a supply of coal is the basis of every industry, and the stoppage of work at Newcastle means paralysing works all over Australia. , To the mine owners and the miners themselves at Newcastle, this event will ' be primararily disastrous. The output of coal from the mines about Newcastle in 1886, amounted to 2,178,116 tons (valued at £1,084,555), of which 1,544,694 tons were exported to

foreign ports. The loss of capital to the mine owners . must be enormous from the stoppage of work, and will , cause great suffering. The men employed underground and -at the pit's mouth number about 6000, and even in a colony with abundance of waste land, it will be difficult for this mass of workers at a particular business to find other employment.. We are informed from Wellington that the price of New Zealand coal will soon be raised 2s per ton. This may have the effect of stimulating employment here. We have abundance of coal in the province of Auckland, but hitherto its working has not been very profitable. In several cases the owners of mines have not been able to thoroughly open them up. The present strike, by causing a demand for our coal, may result in the creation of a valuable permanent trade. Similarly a stimulus to the discovery and development of coalfields in the other colonies will be applied, while it has been alleged, we know not with what basis of truth, that English coal may be landed in Melbourne' at only eighteen pence per ton advance on the cost of coals from New South Wales. This strike, therefore, if it continues for any length of time, is likely to alter entirely the conditions of coal supply in these colonies, and both mineowners and miners are likely to be called on to 1 bear the permanent consequences of this collision of interests. It is well from evil to extract comfort, and to see .good in everything; and Sir Henry Parkes, the Premier of New South Wales, at a public meeting in which lie expressed his sympathy with the miners, and censured the masters for their want of tact and consideration in contributing to the strike, took occasion to say that "the labour difficulties afforded splendid evidence that men in the colonies were' in a much better position than their fellow-workmen in other parts of the world, when they could afford on such trifling pretences to set up defiance to capital." This may be a subject of congratulation viewed in the light of glorification to the colony, but it is to be feared that it is an aspect of the question from which the men themselves will find but little consolation, for if the strike result in the tapping of fresh fountains of supply, and more still, if it be the cause of the importation, as is stated, of large bodies of operative miners into the colony from distant places, it will prove as injurious to the future prospects of the miners themselves as to the mineowners, and 'the strike has rung the death-knell of monopoly in the supply of coals. The miners at Newcastle have been receiving, it appears, a much higher scale of payment than that which has ruled in any other mining district in the world ; and that high rate of wages has been alleged as the .principal cause for keeping up the :j high price of coals and whatever other result may come of it, the present crisis will, in all probability, have the effect of removing that "splendid evidence" of which Sir Henry Parkes has spoken, that the colony is the paradise of the working man.

What will be the result of the strike of the miners on the other co-operative unions of labour in the colonies is yet to be seen. The Maritime Council is believed to be about to maintain an attitude of benevolent neutrality towards the miners in the struggle. How long that may continue, or whether it can be maintained in face of the obligations to mutual help that exist among the various unions of labour in Australia, is doubtful. But it will greatly circumscribe the embarrassment to trade and commerce, and the distress otherwise likely to arise, if the Seamen's Union do not make common cause with the miners ; but of one thing there seems a certainty, that if the movements of the shipping are not impeded by a strike among the seamen,- the coal famine cannot be of very long continuance, and in like proportion the prospects of success to the miners in their singlehanded struggle will be very faint.