THEN AND NOW

New Zealand Times, Volume XLVII, Issue 10901, 16 May 1921, Page 2

THEN AND NOW

“COUNTRY WITHOUT STRIKES.” THE FIRST ARBITRATION RAW. A good deal of interest has attached to the appellation, “A Country Without Strikes,” given to New Zealand by Mr Charles Francis, United States Conciliation Commissioner, now in our midst. Its source lies in a. book by Mr Francis, urging the American nation to formulate its arbitration laws on the model of New Zealand. Under the title, ‘‘Strikes are War; War is Hell,” written twenty-five years ago, the writer described New Zealand as a country without strikes. It was published on the occasion of the passing of the Arbitration Act, in 1895, when the first instalment of compulsory arbitration known to the modern world was introduced. ‘‘Call it what you will (Mr Francis wrote), you cannot, after making a study of its results, say it is not a very long stride in advance of our present conditions in the United States. It is really applying laws to the governing of labour, in the same way that we apply laws for any other purpose, and law, to be effective, must be compulsory. It has been stated that New Zealand is a email country, and that laws which would be effective there could not be utilised in the United States, on account of the variety of conditions and multiplicity of interests.' . . . The question arises in New Zealand as in the United States. New Zealand said: If you ought to arbitrate, you shall arbitrate. The experiment has now been in force time enough to test its workings, and there have been no strikes in that country for five years. Under New Zealand law industrial war has ceased'; in all other countries it is rampant. No political party suggests the repeal of the Act. Workmen and capitalists in New Zealand associate together for the purpose of co-operation, and attain the best interests of both. New Zealand is the most prosperous country in the world. The population was originally settled by the Scotch, and the people are of much the same temperament _as those of the United States, with the. stubbornness and stiok-to-it-iveness of the Scotchmen.”