The Shearers' Trouble.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XVI, Issue 4973, 14 May 1891, Page 4

The Shearers' Trouble.

(Sydney Bulletin.)

The situation at present between the Queensland shearers and the pastoralists is jast this. The two parties arrived at a mutual agreement after an infinity of strife and wrangling, and now the pastoralists insist on substituting for it another thing which they also call a "mutual agreement." Only, as the pastoralists drew up the new agreement entirely on their own responsibility, and without consulting the men. there is nothing " mutual " about it. The men demand the old agreement, and the squatters reply that the new one is practically the same as the old, therefore, the men must knock under and accept it. The men reply that it is entirely different, and, therefore, that they will not accept it. Unless the pastoralists are telling unmitigated lies, the question naturally arises—Why did they fight tooth and nail against the old agreement, seeing it was just the same as the one which they are now fighting for ? And along with this comes another problem—lf there be no real difference between the two sets of regulations, why do the pastoralists fight now 1 They can start any day on the old system, and if the new system be just the same, then they have nothing to fight about, and all the police and soldiers■ and artillery are sheer idiocy. The position of the men is intelligible ; they assert that the agreement which the pastoralisis seek to force upon them involves a serious loss, and they resist the innovation in consequence; but as the squatters declare that the same innovation brings them no profit, then they are fighting about nothing, and arguing about nothing, and trying to grab nothing. And when thqr aren't fighting about anything, then they must be" fighting out of sheer cussed- j ness, and Queensland can't afford to pay LIOOO a day in war-expenses for the sake ] of anybody's cussedness.