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Sun (Christchurch), Volume 1, Issue 8, 14 February 1914, Page 6 (Supplement)

Pushed to the extreme limit of patience and endurance, the New South Wales Employers' Federation, irritated beyond measure with the harassments of Labour, has definitely thrown down the gage of battle, and joined issue with its tormentors. It looks like being a sharp struggle, and a general industrial conflagration is not improbable. The employers declare that they have reached the limit of compromise, and will go no further. The men —the particular reference is to the strike of butchers —express themselves as equally determined to stand by their demands. So the parties, employers and employed, are facing each other on a clear issue. The Executive of the Employers' Federation has discussed the position, and decided that the time has come for a united resistance against the continual elevation of'wages and the reduction of working hours. The excellent examples of the successful combination of Capital against tyrannical Industrialism afforded by New Zealand, Leeds, and South Africa, no doubt influenced the decision. In each of the three cases cited, a too-grasping Labour over-reached itself, and had 'to retire humiliated, discomfited, and emptyhanded. As in the Dominion, the big test was inevitable in the Commonwealth, and the employers, in the proper fighting temper, will have the support of a public which has suffered so much squeezing. The petty tyrannies of the agitators have had unexpected (to them) results. Militant organisation by the Syndicalists has been met by determined protective organisation on the part of the employers who, for years, patient, and, perhaps, somewhat bewTi£eTe"d, teve"" at last haxl placed in their hands a doughty weapon—and by the enemy. If persisted in, this strike must fail, as all well-met strikes have failed. Even so, the solution of the problem of class antagonism, despite Wages Boards, and arbitration laws, seems as unattainable as ever.