A GOAL STRIKE

New Zealand Times, Volume XLVII, Issue 10822, 11 February 1921, Page 3

A GOAL STRIKE

HOW IT WAS {DEALT * WITH IX KANSAS- * A correspondent signing himself “How Long” writes as follows to the editor of the “New Zealand Timee”':—* Sir, —Coal strikes are not peculiar to New Zealand. They had a coai strike in Kansas, U.S.A., and this how* an the “New York Tribune/' Governor Allen, of- Kansas, explains it “We made ah investigation of the strata comprising the State. • As the too stratum we found one and one-halt pe?' cent, of the population made up of the big employers. The bottom stratum, comprising five and one-half per cent., vva< composed of labour. In between was a stratum composed of the remaining ninety-three per cent. That ninety 4 three per cent, is IJb. “With, the passage of the Adamson Law Labour became a contestant for the honour of the upper stratum; bat we, you and I and the rest of us in the same walk of life, haven't moved. .We remain the middle stratum. We are aa ' immense, good-natured, inarticulate mass. We are utterly submerged. The upper stratum and the lower stratum whack each other over our shoulders. They starve us. They freeze u«. They subject us to every inconvenience as to travel and communication. “Well, our good nature reached its limit when the operators and coal miners fell out and quit ' producing coal just at the moment when a blizzard' hat the State. -Thousands of our women and children were in actual danger of freezing and starving to death. Then the nine-tenths upheaved." The upheaval Jed to the Governor appealing for outside labour, and within j 24 hours after his appeal 10,000 men offered their services and worked the mines. Then, the Legislature passed an Act establishing an Industrial Court, and enacted that anyone taking part in j an arrangement oi* conspiracy to lessen j tho production of food, fqel, or clothing committed an offence, and was liable to punishment. The judges of the court could act without any person moving them to do so, or any ten citizens could petition, and on their complaint the court could interfere. The constitu- ! tionality of the Act came in question, and Justice Curran' upheld the statute, and issued an injunction forbidding a strike. In his judgment the judge: ■&aid: — “A great deal has been said of the divine right to strike; the divine right to strike where it affects the health and welfare of the public must be relegated to the realm where the divine right of kings has been .sent/' And coal strikes ceased in Kansas. There is a difference between New -Zealand and Kansas. We have not any Governor Allen in our midst* with hig power, and our Parliament has been unaware of the Kansas* precedent. How long, we wonder, -ostill the middle stratum allow itself to he penalised by the upper or lower stratum, or by both of them ? ' •