THE LABOR UPHEAVAL.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 12664, 18 January 1912, Page 5

THE LABOR UPHEAVAL.

I PROPOSALS PROM COTTON CONFERENCE. (Press Assn.— By Telegraph.— Copyright.) SYDNEY. January 17. The' President of the Rabbit Trappers Union declines that the recent trouble was due to the operations of the Rabbit Combine. They intend to urge the Government to establish factories m order to smash the combine. (Received January 18, 10.20 a.m.) SYDNEY, January 18. Eight hundred employees of the Pelaw-ma-in colliery have been rendered idle as the result of two clipper boys refusing to work. The wharf laborers have appointed delegates to confer with the Employers' Union. The officials express the opinion that long standing troubles will be settled m a few days. PERTH, January 17. The conference of engineers, boilermakers and iron moulders with the Parliamentary Labor party was abortive, Parliamentarians declining to acquiesce with the uilion's refusal of the Government offer of an increase of sixpence a day. LONDON, January 17. The cotton masters propose that if at the end of the half-year's truce Sir G. R. Askwith failed to find a solution of the non-unionist question, the machinery shall not be stopped without six months' notice. The masters' proposals have been submitted to the operatives forthwith. It is calculated that stoppage cost six millions to the trade. Unionists spent two hundred thousand and the spinners two hundred and forty-three thousand. Professor Chapman F. Marquir m a paper before the Statistical Society, shows that between sixty and eigt'hyper cent, of the cotton masters began life as operatives or clerks. OTTAWA, January 17. Special courts were held at night to deal with the St. Lawrence rioters. Twenty-seven were tried and sentenced to terms of two years m the House of Correction. All the saloons were closed WELLINGTON, this day. The signatures of both sides m the waterside workers' dispute were affixed to the agreement yesterday.. The agreement is for two years, and preference to unionists is included' therein. It is estimated that the increase m wages Avill amount from £8000 to \glo,ooo annually. (Special to Herald.) NAPIER, this day. The Napier wharf hands tell me they expect a settlement of the trouble will be arrived at this afternoon. The Wellington agreement between the waterside Markers and the shipping companies has been formally signed, and the increase, m pay will, it is said, amount to between £80,000 and £100,000 per annum. The general impression is that the companies affected will "pass it on" to the public. . The general manager of the Union Company has not yet' gone into figures, but he thinks the Union Company's share of the increased payments will be about half the total. The Home companies cannot, of course, increase their freights on dairy produce ok frozen meat, because they are.working under contracts that have still some time to run. Mr Semple says the delegates got what they could not get from the Arbitration Court, and were highly satisfied. The success of the delegates will no doubt mean a considerable accession to the ranks of the Federation, and a corresponding blow to the Arbitration Court. One employer was inclined to take a gloomy view of the situation. (t lt is all very well," h© said, "to go on giving increases, and to keep passing them on to the public, but where is it all going to end ? This continual giving away is only putting off the evil day — a general strike, which must come sooner or later.

♦Speaking 1 at a social tendered to Mr W. A. Veitch, M.P., by the Wanganui Labor party, Mr W. Lee Martin, a well-known local unionist, referring to the peisistent rumors of a great impending strike, warned workers of the danger of attempting to redress their grievances by strikes, instead of by legislation. He regretted to say that he had reason to believe that wo Mere on the eve of a serious industrial -crisis m this country, and he feared * that the near future would show that some of the men who had been entrusted with responsibilities were not men who should be given them. He did not think that the right to strike should be taken away, but, all the same, he did not believe m strikes unless every other possible remedy had been exhausted, arid they should only be regarded as the very last resource. Strikes would merely be forerunners of evil, and doom the Labor party, and he hoped that the party would travel on legislative lines rather than on strikes, for it was by legislation that it could achieve the best results.