INDUSTRIAL UNREST.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 59, 24 October 1911, Page 4

INDUSTRIAL UNREST.

Voicing the great feeling of unrest which- exists amongst all classes of the community, the Sydney “Daily Telegraph’’ publishes an article on the situation under “New Unionism, X->w Tyranny”, in the course of which it says: “The unionist has obtained all the advantages lie now enjoys with the aid of public sympathy, without which he could have made no progress—for organised labor is still far out-numbered by those who arc not and in many cases cannot be members of unions. The most substantial privileges or rights the worker possesses were given when Labour Governments were unknown. One-man-one-votc, the Early Closing Act, and. arbitration laws in this State, came to unionism from outside, and in Now Zealand, the most “advanced” of all the Australasian countries, there has never, been a Labour party, while at the present time there is one declared Labourite in the elective House. Most conspicuously of all, the community has made substantial sacrifices and subjected itself to inconvenience and expense in the interest of unionism on the specific understanding that thereby it was ensuring, within reasonable limits, industrial peace. Unionists wanted collective bargaining under the law and got it. They wanted an Arbitration Court and it was established; didn’t want it and it was removed; wanted it back and it was brought on the scene again. While tho public was patiently, humoring their whims they struck as promptly and freely as though they had not promised that if they could only get industrial tribunals they would keep the peace. It an award suited them they accepted it, if not they either ignored it or went on strike against it, so that the public suffered in the one case through the dislocation of industry and in the other through having to pay more for the commodity whose producers’ wages had been raised or hours shortened. To-day we are not hotter off for what has been done in the interest of unionism and with very substantial benefits to it but worse off, because industrially unionism shows neither gratitude nor reason. . . It is the presence 01 absence of a feeling of security which counts. The old strike was usually confined to the industry immediately embroiled; the now one extends over many industries toward the malignant ideal of a (general strike, which is another name for a general workers onslaught on the unoffending people. The obsolntc stoppage of our transport services, our food, fuel, or any other necessity, is what is aimed at by this tyranny, which is daily become more and more reckless and vindictive against non-combatants. The community is naturally beginning to ask itself what it -has done, what it has obtained for the sacrifices it has made and is always willing to make where just cause can lie shown under the widest facility for representing grievances. Industrial peace, that substitution of rational discussion for “the barbaric weapon of the strike” wo heard so much about before arbitration has become a mockery. 'J he same with industrial security. There never was such insecurity as now, when enterprise chills under tho hopelessness of continuity of relations with workers who will neither reason noi consider, but strike blindly at friend and too, strong and weak, indiscriminately and never give a thought to the suffering they inflict on individuals or the injury they do the State. This is the “unionism run mad” that is becoming intolerable to a community slowly realising that it is being bitterly requited, and that after all the new order means that a minority is cxercisng despotism over a majority only now beginning to reflect on a majority’s reserve strength.”