Woman and the Strike.

NZ Truth, Issue 444, 20 December 1913, Page 2

Woman and the Strike.

"•Striker's Wife" writes:— -There is a phase underlying this strike which up to the present I have/ not seen touched upon. To my mind, there is hardly a degraded creature, bricklayer, carpenter or laborer, let alone any. member of the old Waterside Workers' Union, working .on the wharf to-day who would be there if wo women did our duty. Whether it be mother, wife, sister, cousin, aunt, or sweetheart, We have the power but, alas, m at least 75 per' cent, of cases we' have failed, misera.bly failed, to use it. Men want sympathy at a trying time. They want! help, and to force a man to do an act which brands him for life, is degrading m the extreme to womanhood. I am informed by my husband that there is not 5 per cent. 01. those gone back who are m actual need, and, with the assistance of the Distress Committee, could have, held out for three months without ; iu any way feeling the pinch. Well, what is the cause ? I think want . of education is at the root of the matter, not only among the working class as wives and mothers, but as much, and more so, among thoso fine ladies who have been killing time supplyIng cakes, tea and cream puffs I<o "specials." Nagging, finding fault, complaining, moping, are not the characteristics to win a strike, but love, sympathy; endurance, a kindly word, cheerfulness, and every assistance possible, and as a woman of the world I do not believe the man is born who would not succumb to that Influence m fighting, for a principle. I like a fight, if necessary, but I like It clean, and I do not remember, nor have I read, where a Government has so debased its functions a* to assist the employers to beat the strikers by forming an Arbitration Union with five hundred "specials" as its first members under an armed guard ns at Mount Cook. Neither the silly letters of "Ham." "Wore Ham," "Mother of Ten," "Jim the Penman," nor all tho rest of the right-inking community m the capitalistic papers will convince me that either tho letter or the spirit of' the Arbitration,. Act has been carried out.