THE FIRST STRIKE.

Otago Witness, Issue 2298, 17 March 1898, Page 14

THE FIRST STRIKE.

The "strike," as an engine of industrial warfare, is not such a modern innovation after all. The " Pilgrim Fathers " of Otago, many of them who had never done a day's hard manual labour in their lives in the Old Country, found the work of bush-clearing and roadmaking toilsome indeed. Aching backs and blistered hands were the first heritage of the soil many of them reaped, and smouldering discontent ripened into open revolt when the Company's agent, Captain Cargill, announced that the wages for day labourers were to be reduced from 3s. to 2s. 6d. The men in a body left off work, with one or two exceptions, on strike for higher pay and shorter hours. The first eight-hour movement then had its beginning, and in due time the hours of labour were reduced to eight instead of ten. The two men who kept on at the reduced wage were subjected to a good deal of annoy nee by the strikers, but their reply was both practical and sensible. One of the two brothers said, " What can a men do ; he cannot starve nor let his children starve." The same due appreciation of small things enabled the brothers Duncan to attain prominent positions in the Otago settlement in after days, while some of the arrogant strikers had to make a lengthened acquaintance with poverty. But as the land sales had not proceeded as rapidly as the Company anticipated, the funds available for" the payment of wages were becoming exhausted, and the agent had therefore to economise. Captain Cargill protested and pointed out io the men that they were working shorter hours and earning more than they would earn at Home. In the end they had to return to work. The formation of Princes-street was proceeded with, and roads to tap the country districts commenced. By the end of May the whole of the immigrants had left the Philip Laing and taken up their quarters in Dunedin.