THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 7, 1925. TO END THE STRIKE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 19142, 7 October 1925, Page 10

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 7, 1925. TO END THE STRIKE.

As a means of reaching an amicable settlement of the seamen's strike, so far as it affects the Dominion, the conference between shipowners and men has failed. But it has not been fruitless. It has produced, for the guidance of public judgment, a clear statement of the issue. Upon that judgment the strike's fate really depends. In the last resort it must be accepted. The Prime Minister's recital of the conflicting proposals of the parties provides all requisite data for that judgment's pronouncement. How stands it between them? The men, brushing aside the decision of the National Maritime Board, in which their own accredited representatives concurred, have refused to take the ships to sea unless the wages ruling in July are restored. They persist in this defiance of the board's decision. At the conference they laid down implacably the conditions on which they would resume duty: no penalties for their breach of agreement, no record of their misconduct, no forfeiture of wages for the time during which they have refused to work, no prosecution of them for that refusal, no insistence upon the articles they had signed, and in addition to these concessions certain positive demands —immediate release of the men imprisoned, their compensation in money for that imprisonment, the reimbursement hy the owners of the strikers' legal costs, the payment by the owners of the full cost of the strikers' board and lodging during the strike, the abolition of the sliding scale of wages, and the restoration of the July rate. It needed only their further demand to be given "very good" certificates of conduct, in relation to the articles that they demand shall be annulled, to round off their conditions with artistic completeness. On their part, the shipowners agreed to waive the institution of prosecutions, providing the men returned immediately to the ships on the terms of the existing articles, to give "very good" discharges conditional on behaviour during the balance of the double voyage, to resume current allotments and also to pay outstanding allotments due. They suggested that the men's grievances should be placed before the Board of Trade. Having these conflicting proposals set out thus plainly, public opinion will not find it difficult to judge between them. The men are not merely flagrantly breaking the decision of the National Maritime Board, to which they are parties; they are actuated by a spirit entirely lawless. No tribunal of any kind, according to their spokesmen's words, is acceptable to them. It scarcely needed that utterance of their allegedly 'considered opinion" to make it clear that law means nothing to them. Their conditions of resuming work are unreasonable to the point of absurdity. They are propounded by men without a sense of responsibility, to say nothing of a sense of humour. Whatever case they may have had lias been reduced to a farce. The calm assumption that they have done nothing wrong in treating articles as scraps of paper, and that they should be rewarded, rather than punished, for their law-breaking, betokens a deficient sense of justice. What standing have they to talk of rights who demand compensation lor doing wrong? They have cut away all foothold for any reasonable plea. That they reject all possible tribunals is an unwitting acknowledgment that their case will not bear investigation. It has been sometimes urged in palliation of strikes that they have, called public attention to legitimate grievances and so compelled reasonable and sympathetic inquiry into therm That cannot be claimed for this strike, for the strikers disdain all tribunals and will have no arbitrament but that of ordeal by force. They have demanded of the owners some things, such as the remission of fines, that the owners are powerless to give. The implication of this will not be lost upon the public. The owners' position has been considerably strengthened by the text, and tone of their alternative proposals. Their explicit readiness to abide by the results of full investigation of the men's grievances is in marked contrast to the strikers' rejection of all suggestions of such inquiry. The conference gave the men a splendid opportunity to put themselves on side. They have not simply lost it: they have throw* { i away. Mr. Ooates has indicated the only course remaining, now that the men have issued their ultimatum of force. As the chief custodian of the public weal, he has done hi 3 best to meet this threat with patience and conciliation. As he sayß, the Government has no jurisdiction so far as the dispute itself is concerned. But it has a duty to perform when lawlessness seeks to take the coun-

try by the throat. The strikers' deride the law and jeopardise the Dominion's prosperity. They menace both employers and employed with serious loss. Our export trade cannot be left unprotected xrom the injury they seek to inflict. The ships must move. There is no call for heated display of resentment, however reasonable and deep that resentment may be. Whatever steps may be necessary to ensure the transport of our produce can be taken with a quiet and unbending determination to safeguard the legal rights that the strikers scorn. The Prime Minister will find the reasoned resolve of the whole community rallying to his support in this. If in this process the strikers find that their appeal to force recoils upon themselves, they will have themselves to thank. Their rejection of the opportunity that the conference gave cannot be the last word, either in this country or in Britain. What the Dominion has to say will be said in no uncertain way.