Recent Strikes and the lessons They Teach Us.

Otago Witness, Issue 1933, 25 February 1892, Page 17

Recent Strikes and the lessons They Teach Us.

TO THE EDITOR.

Sin, — Within comparatively recent times the leaders of the labour unions seem to have discovered that by combination of workmen and the adoption of a general boycott it is possible j for them to stop all industry within the community, and having made ibis discovery they I thought, andjtaught.their followers to think, that [ in it they possessed the power to compel the '' whole community to obey fhuir orders. ' They did not, and do not now, 'seem to understand that the same power is possessed by every considerable section of the community. The coalowners could stop all industries by closing their mines, and bringing all machinery to a stands'.ill. The pastoralists' could starve the whole community in a week by refusing to sell beef or mutton, and so with every other considerable section of the industrial community. Bat neither coalowners nir pastoralists have ever been stupid enough to attempt to exercise this power, which, like the royal prerogative to veto all legislation, is only allowed to exist so long as it is not used to the detriment of the commuuity. The laboiir unions of Australia alone have been foolish enough to attempt such a thing, and in consequence they have received a very bitter lesson, the full effect of which has not been felt yet — just such a lesson as the coalowners or pastoralists would have received hud they attempted anything so foolish ; but in the case of the labour unions, the misery anil want produced and the permanent damage done is very much greater than it would havo been in the case of the coalowners or pastoralists ; and yet in spite of these very striking object lessons which we have had here the labour unions of Englaud seem to be following in the steps of the Austraii an unions. The workmen there are told to emulate Australian workmen, and what we know as a miserable failure whi^h has brought ruin and misery on tens of thousands of honest workmen, and tor a time crippled all('industries, is there spoken of by self-interi'sted leaders as a brilliant success. Ido not think lam going beyond the mark in saying that the action of the labour unions in Australia within the last few years has reduced the amount of employment to be found within the colonies. It lias also reduced the wage fund and discouraged the investment of fresh capital, and in spite of the enormous natural advantages which we possess it is now reducing the average wage rate for all kinds of labour throughout Australia. In addition to this, it has created in proportion to our population a larger body of unemployed workmen and sundowners of the "sturdybeggar " type than is to bo found in any other numerically equal community in the world. Naturally one asks what is the remedy for all this, and the answer must bo there can be no remedy until workmen cease to give blatant and self-interested fools the power to injure them and the community, and this they are not likely to do until they realise fully that the interests of the whole community are not to be made subservient to the interests of any class or section, and are not to be set aside on tLe ipse dia-it of any self-conceited ignoramus who happens to secure the position of chairman of a strike committee or president of a labour union. — I am, &c, W. E. Abbott. Wingen, New South Wales, February 10.