LABOUR AND THE ARBITRATION ACT

Otago Witness, Issue 2828, 27 May 1908, Page 63

LABOUR AND THE ARBITRATION ACT

DR FIXDLATTS ADDRESS.

WANGANUI, May 23

Dr Findlay delivered an address at vhe Opera House last night on Labour and^ the Arbitration Act before a fairly representative audience. In opening, he said his purpose was not to deliver a political address, or to explain the attitude and action of the Government. He proposed, only to deal with the large question — the wage question — in its_ educational, moral, eccial, economic, and distributive aspect. The vital' question was as to how the proceeds of production could be more fairly divided upon a basis which would advance the welfare of the workers without impairing our industries. He hoped that aim would be to some extent achieved by the legislation the Government was at the present time considering.

It was impossible to understand a great social question like the wage question without looking at its history, and he therefore briefly traced that history. The basis of the English industrial system as it at present existed was free contract and free competition. He proposed to show that in a large measure this system, dependent as it was upon the exigencies of the market, was to a large extent radically wrong. This systenp was not more than a century old. Before the beginning of last century wages were not fixed by tree contract, but were based on custom and fixed by law. Dr Findlay traced the course of English legislation bearing upon the question. He quoted Professor Rogers's declaration that under the old system in existence during the fifteenth century and the first quarter of the sixteenth century the workers were better off than they have ever been since. He maintained that if they could appeal to the humanity of the employer apart from the influences which swayed him in. the strife of free .competition, they' could, depend on getting some measure of justice. It wae when the employer had to entrench, himself, as often he must do in self-defence, behind a system brought about by relentless competition that they got a stone instead of the bread they asked for. Why, he asked, did the custom so approved by Professor Rogers decline and disappear? It was because, in the first place, of the abuses of the guild system. Before Stepheneon invented the steam engine a system of merchant and craft guilds obtained in England. These merchant guilds developed into close corporations, operating disastrously in restraint of trade. The crafts' guilds, representing the workers, also had restrictions operating in like manner, and a spirit of hampering exclusiveness per-,, meatedi the whole industrial system, ancE revolt was the natural -consequence, and the last remnant of the guild, system was swept away when the Apprentice Law was repealed in 1807.

There came then a great cry for natural liberty and for individual freedom, and tK& nation, sick -of ,-tbe&© {forna^in^ restrictions, listened with approval to the doctrine preached by Adam Smith. That doctrine had not stood the test of time and experience. Smith preached freedom of contract, individual liberty, everybody for himself, and the Devil take the hindmost. We today knew what tßat meant. This doctrine of freedom of competition was peculiarly fortunate at its inception, for almost contemporaneously with the publication of the " Wealth of Nations" came the invention of the steam engine and other great mechanical inventions. With these great industrial agencies in their possession, and with Adam Smith's text book in their pocket, the people of England went wdth the whirl of free competition; but though England forged her way to the front in _ the world of commerce until she claimed to stand pre-eminent, the workers

found themselves compelled to work for whatever their masters chose to give them. This was tEe first spelling out of Adam Smith's doctrine of free contract and free competition — the slavery of the workers £o build up the huge fortunes of England's cotton kings. It was held that cheapness and low wages were essential to England's greatness, and that cursed principle was maintained by many men in England to-day. Among the forces that had arisen to check this ignoble system was the growth of trades unionism ; and that, indeed, was the only protection the workers of England %ad to-day to check the evils of free contract and free competition. But there were millions in England to-day who had not even this protection, because they had not the means or the ability to avail themselves of the benefits resulting from organisation. Dr Findlay went on to declare that what -was oalled freedom was not freedom, but slavery. When a haggard seamstress struck a bargain with a sweating 1 employer, was that freedom? When a hungry labourer accepted the miserable pittance allowed him by a grinding employer, was that freedom? No; it was, as he had said, slavery. They might well be thankful that in this Dominion they had grappled with and overthrowjl these evils, and that the protection of law was thrown over every man, woman,

and child in the country. i Th© speaker dealt at some length "with ' the question of the " living wage," which he believed many workers in tihis country misunderstood. The living wage, he said, did not mean a starvation wage. It meant a wage which enabled a worker to maintain himself or herself in reasonable conformity with decent circumstances. He asked his hearers to admit that the two agencies which were forcing the consideration of this great question were sentiment and the outcome of sentiment. He claimed that the most effective anti-sweating agency ever conceived was the Conciliation and Arbitration Act of Mr Reeves. It was said that the act had failed to prevent strikes. In the light of recent events he must to some extent admit that, but he asked them if they knew that for 11 years #f tear the act passed it was no offence in New Zealand to strike or to look out. That would show that i£ was not the compulsory idea which proImoted the passage of the measure. The driving force which placed the act on the Statute Book was only to a small extent due to the desire to prevent strikes, but very largely to a determination to crush the evils, of sweating, and it had done that. Quoting from Mr Reeves's book, Dr Findlay citea the author's assertions as to the prevalence of sweating in New Zealand less than 20 years ago. He quoted the concluding passage in Mr Reeves's book to prove the accuracy of his (Dr Findlay'^) contention that the aot was passed primarily to abolish the sweating evil. The act of 1834 provided | that the Court of Arbitration might fix

a minimum wage against which the worker could strike if he liked, but against which the employer could only "lock out," if he was prepared to go out of business altogether. They would see that the act was in this respect one-sided. But the fact that it was showed, that the fundamental principle of the measure was the attainment of reasonable wages for the workers. He quoted figures showing the rate of wages then existing, especially in the case of women, as against wages now obtaining. It was this very aot which had takten the sweating evil by the throat— this act which many workers seemed to believe had been passed merely to prevent strikes. Dr Findlay asked the workers of New Zealand if they were going to forget the good they had received from the measure. The act had its shortcomings, but it had achieved great things. Let the act be repealed to-morrow, aiid "they would hare a recurrence of old grievances. He admitted that strike prevention was a matter most fully discussed at the time when the act ' was passed. Mr Reeves claimed that the spirit of underlying the act would make for the prevention of industrial strife. The supporters of the bill believed that the same honest desire to settle dispues which existed among men and masters before the act passed would continue after it was made law, and that the functions of the Arbitration Court would not be called into operation, except as a last resort. For years after the act came into force they had enjoyed industrial peace ; indeed, the people of New Zealand did not know what a. great strike was. In five out of six of the great mining conflicts in England the workers had lost. In New Zealand in the last great maritime conflict the workers had lost In America the record was the same. The records of Great Britain showed that every year the Mother Country suffered a loss equivalent to 44,000 men on full work. Added to this great . pecuniary loss were the greater evils Cr*-starvation and suffering imposed on innocent wormen and children. He admitted that the Arbitration Act had its shortcomings. The legislation was novel when the Parliament of New Zealand gave statutory effect to it. _ The world looked on and shook its head, but to-day we did not lead; we were behind. Other countries had gone further than we had. Canada last year bad passed an industrial law much more stringent than ours — on act which made a strike an offence punishable by a fine of £10 a day, and provided for imprisonment in striking in 'violation of an, award. The Industrial Act of New South" Wales went still further, and provided that if a worker wilfully struck in violation of an award he might be .sent to gaol for three months, without the option, of a^fine. This surely touched the high-water murk of severity. The Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration ' Act, applying in every State where it was properly . worked, followed on the same lines, and provided imprisonment for strikes. We are behind the times. Similar legislation was being adopted everywhere. The shortcomings of the act were due not so much to weakness of the pleasure itself as to the manner in which it had been used. There were faults on both sides — on the side of the workers and on the side of the employers. He ventured to say that a section of the workers was afflicted with that universal weakness of failing to appreciate the virtues of long continuance. If to-morrow they took away the act, they would get back all the old disadvantages, and the workers would be the first to discover that they had lost a valuable friend. 'Then there was a. class — the militant Socialists — who objected to our whole industrial system. They would tear up by the roots all private enterprise. It was hopeless to devise any which would please these men. It *was said that the act had produced the dead level of wages; that a minimum wage was the only wage paid. That came about largely by reason of the fact that the act had oeen misused. The court, it was expected, would be used to arbitrate in the larger sense. It was intended that it should be a State regulator of wages ; but instead the court had been flooded with petty cases, and asked to deal with a mass of details, untile to-day they had the ridiculous spectacle of the court having to decide the quantity and quality of plum-pudding to be included in the diet of the shearers. They could not escape a dead level under conditions that had uniformity of wages existing to-day, not by reason of the act, but because of the misuse of the act. * It was to get away from this dead level that the Prime Minister was at present endeavouring to devise a solution. Then as to the cost of living. It was said the cost of living had inoreased. But what had the Arbitration Act to do with that? Practicably nothing. The increase was due to influences altogether beyond the 6cope and power of the act — \vas due, in fact, to the fluctuations of the market. Then, again, with regard to rent in Wellington, for example, the increase in the cost of rent was due to increase that had taken place in the value of land, to the un- ! improved value of the land. On the subject of increased cost of living, Dr Findlay quoted from a return supplied by Mr Yon Dadelszen, Registrar-general, in which it was demonstrated that the rise in wages i had been at the rate of 17.9 per cent, in 12 years, and the rise in price of necessary foodstuff* 18.6 per cent, in the same period. He could not divulge just then the results i of the very serious consideration given to the matter by the Minister of Labour and the Right Hon. the Prime Minister, but ! he could say that a measure would be brought down this year which would provide the workers with a real, and not merely nominal, wage. The amended legislation would recognise the public as an interested party m an industrial dispute. It was intended to abolish the Conciliation Boards, and to set up in their place Industrial Councils, the members of which -would be drawn from the trade affected. They would be aided by an independent chairman, and after having dealt with the dispute dissolve again into the ranks of trade. By this means the Government hoped to prevent the delay, and save the expense occasioned by the existing system. There would, too, be no unjustifiable appeals to the higher court, and they would no longer have the absurdity of one trial before the Conciliation Board and then march on to the Arbitration Court. As to imprisonment of strikers, he had shown that in nearly every progressive country imprisonment now> followed the offence of striking. Nevertheless, he was personally opposecT to it, for he reoognised that unless imprisonment carried with it the stigma of disgrace it was no deterrent. He instanced the case of the English suffra- . gettes, who were not deterred by imprison-

ment, but who, on the contrary, lookev upon it as heroism. If they took a bodj of men who struck — perhaps not for thorn, selves, but because they believed that theii? fellow workmen had been unjustly dealt with, or because they considered that thn rights of workers had been violated — ana put them in- prison, they would not be dis» graced. Such treatment, instead of punish> r ing them, would win them sympathy. Public opinion was not yet ripe in New Zealand for the treatment of "striking as a crime." Moreover, experience had shown: that imprisonment had failed to stop strikes. It had failed in every State in Australia. He asked them if it would not be better to wipe off our law this thunderbolt, and devise some provision which would be effective in ensuring payment of fine. That end would be attained by a provision which would make it illegal in any employer to employ a striker until ho had paid the fine imposed by the court. Such a, provision would work silently and potently, and would mean that a man who refused to obey the law would have to leave Newi Zealand. Public sentiment in the past had> branded a. blackleg as. despicable; but i£ organised labour persisted in ignoring law, publio opinion would change, and the great mass of people would cease to look upon a. blackleg with disfavour, and would hail him as a volunteer who came forward in the public interests to prevent the clogging of the wheels o F industry. In conclusion, the Attorney-general advised the workers noti to be led away by false dreams, but to co-operate with the Government in mv proving existing conditions.