INDUSTRIAL WARS.

New Zealand Times, Volume LXXVII, Issue 5374, 6 September 1904, Page 4

INDUSTRIAL WARS.

Public attention is at present so much engrossed in watching the great international struggle now proceeding in Eastern Asia that industrial battles of vast magnitude and of faM'eaching consequences are allowed to pass almost unnoticed. At the present moment two “strikes” are in progress, and there arc over 300,000 men “in the field.” These do not specially affect New Zealand, though some indirect consequences may be felt even here. The wages dispute that has led to the Marseilles dock labourers going on strike has already thrown 100,000 men out of work, and the movement is spreading, as the quay labourers at Lyons have left their employment in sympathy with their fellow-workers. _ The French mail steamers, whicli carry on a considerable trade with Australia, are all being delayed, owing to the difficulty in obtaining labour; and it is evident that the delay and inconvenience suffered by merchants on this side of the world are as nothing compared with the loss and hardships inflicted on shippers, traders, workers, and non-combatant women and children in France. America is the scene of an even more extensive and embittered labour dispute than that which is raging in the French Republic. A strike of meathandling employees in Chicago has been in progress for seven weeks: it has been accompanied by rioting and bloodshed ; and wo now learn that workers of the same class in eight different cities have joined in the struggle—bringing up the total of those out of work to over 200,000. By this dispute, industries employing £30,000,000 capital are more or less paralysed, for the non-union labour available is insufficient to supply the places of those cn strike. As a consequenoe there is a shortage in the meat supplies for consumption, and the price has been raised to the consumers. The latter fact 'will evoke sympathy with the strikers, as the public are sure to resent an increase in the cost of living. Colossal labour disputes are almost chronic in the United States, where feeling runs high between organised labour on the One hand and the organised “trusts” on the other. 'Hardly a week passes without some large strike taking place, and these have frequently as concomitants violent

collisions between strikers and ‘’blacklegs” or between tbo former and the militia, as, for example, in the ease of the recent miners’ strike in Colorado. Tbo extraordinary thing is that American statesmen steadily decline to introduce legislation on tbo model of the Xew Zealand Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act, which has produced a condition of profound industrial peace in this country. Even in Great Britain, where strikes are showing a decrease, there were, in 1903, no fewer than 387 disputes, involving 117,000 men. who lost at a moderate computation £700.000 in wages, while the loss to employers, merchants, exporters, etc., in diversion of trade,, etc., was doubtless much greater. In America, as wo have seen, there are now nearly double tile number of men idle through a single wages dispute that were involved in British strikes for a whole year. A book, “ America on Strike,” would form an interesting sequel to ‘‘America at Work.”