EDITORIALS. THE RAILWAY LABOUR TROUBLE.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 951, 23 May 1890, Page 27

EDITORIALS.

THE RAILWAY LABOUR TROUBLE.

The correspondence we publish elsewhere between the Railway Commissioners and the

Railway employes reveals a very unsatisfactory state of affairs-. A powerful labour organisation has been brought about and is evidently disposed to use force ruthlessly and senselessly. It will not listen to argument or consent to a conference, but insists upon the acceptance of its ultimatum under peril, in case of refusal, of bringing the railway traffic of the Colony to a standstill. This amounts to something closely akin to conspiracy against the public welfare. The demands made by the railway employes seem to us to be eminently unreasonable in one respect —the attack upon boy labour. What the people mean by senselessly persecuting their boys passes comprehension. A wretched, contemptible whine about boy lafiour has become abominably common, and ought to bring a blush to the cheeks of the able - bodied men who utter it. If this line of con duct is persevered with New Zealand will be regarded as an object of scorn by her neighbours, unless they also subvert nature and, Saturn - like, devour their own offspring. The railway employes have gone to great extremes in the matter, for we are assured that out of a total staff of four thousand two hundred there are only about six hundred boys, one to every seven men. Then again, the employes are unreasonable in not consenting to a conference with the Commissioners. This is really the worst of the unfortunate business—might is to be right, and that, it seetns to us, is the idea that is catching hold of the proletariat. They find that The complacency of Parliament has made them masters of the situation, and masters they intend to be, exercising their own sweet wills at all hazards. We do not hesitate to say that this will have to be checked—Parliament must grapple with the subject, and legislate to prevent excesses of the kind. What is wanted are tribunals of arbitration, and making strikes illegal. Striking and boycotting are first cousins to Judge Lynch, and if reason and moderation are to hold sway they must be discouraged and prohibited If Parliament will not do this ; if it persists in permitting the unrestricted exercise of unthinking impulse stimulated by brutishness, it must be prepared to face anarchy. And more than this, the Colony will be rendered next to uninhabitable, and ail who can will gird their loins and flee from it.