Australian Subscriptions to the Strike.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XVI, Issue 5610, 15 November 1889, Page 2

Australian Subscriptions to the Strike.

A London correspondent writes : — Ever since the great strike concluded, all sorts of worthy people have been busying themselves speculating as to what could be the motive which induced the Australian colonies to subscribe with such extraordinary liberality to the Dockers' Relief Fund. The " Standard " explains the phenomenon with characteristic malevolence. It says : "An element of pure selfishness has of course entered largely into this sinister liberality. To keep English immigration out of the colonial market is a prime article of the Antipodean trades union creed ; and the impression has been astutely propagated that to assist the English laborer to bring the English capitalist to his knees is a short and easy way of preventing the surplus population from invading the Australian colonies and competirg with the wage-re-ceivers of Adelaide, Melbourne, Dunedin, etc." Curiously enough Phil Robinson (of all people) coincides with this view, but Mr Hutton attributes the generous outburst purely to profound sympathy. There have (he says) been severe and successful strikes in the boot-making and other trades in Melbourne lately, and the colonists were just in the mood to help others fighting for their rights. " F," in a long epistle to the Pall Mall Gazette, protests against its being supposed that the Attitude of Australia in the strike involves a success for the principle of colonial federation. The people who subscribed the money are ("F." says) the "Young Australia" or National party ; and its inclination is all in the direction of " cutting the painter," and not of drawing ties closer. Atthewinding-upmeetings in connection with the great strike, " good old Australia," as the dockers have affectionately rechristened our antipodean possessions, naturally came in for plenteous kitdus on account of their generous support of the dockers' cause. Speaking in Hyde Park on Sunday, Burns said, "It was strange that most help should have come from across the seas. The fact showed that the internationalisation of labor was no longer a myth, as it was once supposed to be, but was becoming more absolutely a reality from shore to shore and from continent to continent." (Cheers.) Ben Tillett also referred gratefully to the Australian subscriptions, but alleged that some of the Anglo-Colonial merchants had cabled to stop supplies. He meant to obtain the names of these gentlemen, and should placard them all over London. The Wairoa Guardian says : — We learn that Mr G. B. Worgan, of Gisborne, who has attained such notoriety in the past, with the nativas on both the East and West Coasts of this island, was at Nuhaka last week negotiating with the native owners for a lease of the Hax at Nuhaka a d T.nhnenui, for flax-milling purposes.