N.Z. MAIL PUBLISHED WEEKLY. FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 1889.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 916, 20 September 1889, Page 16

N.Z. MAIL PUBLISHED WEEKLY. FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 1889.

Tjiere ia cause for general congratulation at the terinination of the great London strikp. Its righteousness admitted, it was none the less disturbing during its currency. That trade was paralysed in London and received a shock throughout the United kingdom was bpt one of the certain consequences of the conflict between capital and labour. That the ramifications of the strike extended farther than a strike ever reached before was not an anticipated consequence, and opened the eyes of the people to the marvellous ehange in trade conditions which has taken place during the last decade. The poverty and wretchedness of the Mother Country imagined that it rested under its oyyn peculiar ban and, sui gengris., excited no. pity outside of itself and its environment. Bat the beginning of the lesson is apparent here. The misery of the

THE LESSON OR TRE STRIKE.

world cannot now hug itself in silence and secrecy and think to escape outside compassion. Sympathy is boundless now-a days; commiseration is a potent magician that brings the ends and middle of creation into touch. That sorrow is about only needs to be known, and at once amelioration is put in motion. Mutual help—the grand panacea for this world’s ills—is never at rest, and of late years it has become impressed upon society as one of the higher of humanity’s duties. Of late years, too, that highest and best of all influences mundane—the British—has waxed amazingly at the Antipodes and elsewhere. And, as an influence, its growth has proceeded under happier auspices than have prevailed with its growth in older countries. It has soared above the commonplaces and accepted conditions that control the lower strata of the masses of Europe ; but it understood those conditions, and, when the time of trial came, it; threw out the helping hand with lightning rapidity, and for the first time in the contemporary history of the Mother Country and the colonies gave the world the most emphatic of all assurances that the people were one in sentiment and aspiration, even as they were one in race. What a vista of probabilities does thin open out ! If such sentiment could be excited by the woes of one or two hundred thousand of the people, what would be likely to ensue if the heart of the nation itself were depressed and required support and stimulus ? It is not too much to expecc that the response from the colonies would be startling in its ananimity and whole-heartedness. In the Old Country the people are learning to stand shoulder to shoulder for their rights and best interests ; in the colonies they are doing likewise, and now by the operation of the stimulus sudden emergency the fact is made patent that the whole are as one. And it is a fact that will gain in force year bv year. The great mass of the people have discovered the direction in which lies their true interest--,and having found it, are not likely to forget or to miss an opportunity of im proving -the occasion when one arises. Australasia is now a daily word in the dens and slums of the Mother Country, where, perhaps, it was scarcely, if ever, heard before ; a touch of nature has revived a kinship almost forgotten. And who will begrudge that touch of nature, that revival of kinship in the most deplorable and degraded of all directions? Not coionsts, forsooth In wbat direction does colonial sympathy bubble up and overflow? Not in that of the high and mighty of Great Britain, hut of her suffering and perishing sons and daughters, who are the wretched victims of cruel and inexorable circumstances. The colonies exult in their ability tq tender help to those downtrodden of the nation, and are in active sympathy with all whose efforts trend in a similar direction. The woful pariahs of London are the connecting link between the English and colonial sec tions of the great British army of labour. These same pariahs have in their agony blown up a welding heat that has united the twain in indissoluble bonds, and we are only at the commencement of the greatest effort labour has yet made. The full measure of consequence may only be imagined* and will fall very "far short : of the actual ultimate reality even at i that. . The immediate consequences in Great Britain are marvellous, even at ; this early' §lage of the movement. Those who have been mercilessly worked will tolerate the condition no longer sinister significance in the action of the miserable railway employes, whom we have just been told are about to organise to obtain a reduction of their hours of labour to ten and a half per diem !; Their hours of labour have been twelve, and perhaps more, and all they ask for is the lessening of the terrible physical and mental strain they are subjecled to. And is it p,ot yighfc their prayer should be answered, let the shrine fie what it may where it is offered up ?- And the lessou the strike is conveying is also that too much is sacrificed to mere cheapness of production. It is because ot this excessive cheapness, the offspring of extreme competition, that labour of nil kinds is so underpaid. The great strike that has so eonvqlsed the nation really originated in the abominable eompetition between rival dock companies. A very able article in The Economist points out how dock companies’ dividends have been at from

I to 1 £ per cent for years, and that they have carried competition to the length of not only docking ships for nothing, but paying ships to come in. Of course, this reacted on tire wretched labourers. We hope to hear that the result of the strike has been the restoration to sanity of the dock companies, and that permanent charges have been fixed sufficient for all concerned. Another result of the strike will, we trust, be the establishment of a rule never again to be broken : that the faces of the poor shall be no longer remorselessly ground. There may be poverty ; there may be oppression ; there may be cruel suffering still; but the line will be drawn before extreme limits are reached. The full lesson of the* strike is that the toilers of the people have taken a tremendous onward stride in which they have received voluntary assistance from capital, paradoxical though this may seem. Not, perhaps, capital in its greater aggregations, but capital that freely circulates amongst the “ bettermost ” people. The strings of so-termed, “ money-bags ” have not been loosened, but purse-strings have, and from the lesser hoards came abundance in the hour of need. And it may be surely affirmed that there is no kind of labour that may not benefit by unselfish co-operatiou, and that the closer the intelligent co-opera-tion the greater the reduction of the strain of competition. If labour is only true to itself and reasonable in its demauds, there is nothing in reason that it may not compass by wisely directed efforts for liberal maintenance. Cheapness is unquestionably the curse of labour—that is, cheapness within the limits of everything that ministers to sensuousness. The bare necessaries of life cannot be too cheap but, those provided for, all else should be paid for liberally by those who can afford. Not the least of the lessons of the strike is that which taught the power of moderation. The stat ving wretches were moderate even in their agony, ‘ and they compelled submission to their moat grievous 'ca-<e. And let those who would fain make -capital out of this beware. We are told that one of the principal organisers of the strike is on his way to the colonies to organise another of still greater dimensions. There is a false ring about this that will not find favour with true colonial men and women. The latter may be intensely sympathetic, but they are very far from being destructive in their tendencies, and this the man Burns, or any other of his type, will find out to his cost. They are anything but puppets to be made to dance to the string-pulling of such persons, but they will always be ready to put forth their hands to any good work when the real time for action arrives. We do hope, that all sections of colonists will have the good sense to so order their houses as to fender outside interference of any kind quite out of the question ; and more than that, to so order that they may be an example to the rest of the world ; that delegates ruaj' come to them, not to stir up strife, but to be educated in. all that is highest in altruism. But such a standard as that can only be -attained by the assiduous cultivation of the unselfish germ. There is aninevitablelessening of existing extremes in the near future, and it will be well if the modification is brought about by wisely graduated provision. There is a necessity that is inexorable, and it is dogging the heels of the questions which we aye considering. He who is wise will read as he runs.