Bad Chapter Closed?

NZ Truth, Issue 946, 12 January 1924, Page 1

Bad Chapter Closed?

Tho prospect of a settlement of the West Coast coalmining dispute is the best bit of New Yeaf hews current. The dispute has been m every sense destructive; -it has constructed nothing. It has not served fn any way to improve Industrial relations; it has served not the menders'! of society, but the would-be enders 6f| it, and on them — and them elonej—the moral responsibility rests. In th|s, "of course, there is no element of accident. The dispute was thrust updn \th<j> employers as part of a systematic policy of wrecking tactics, which will persist as long as the industrial , system harbors the wrecker parasite. I |Some good might be done' if the Government were to publish en estimate of the loss to. the miners, to the t «mplpyers, and to New Zealand through huge coal imports from a country (Au(ktralla) with which New Zealand's trado 'balance is chronically unfavorable.;!' Is. this reported settlement the end[ of it? Oh, no; but wo have closed a chapter, through process of exhaustion.