PROFESSOR MILLS ON STRIKES.

Colonist, Volume LIV, Issue 13455, 28 June 1912, Page 8

PROFESSOR MILLS ON STRIKES.

In a lecture given in Wellington Professor Mills (wo quote from tho "Post") said:—The executive of tho United Labour party had considered tho Waihi strike, and had definitely decided that it would speak no word and take- no sides upon it at all. His party had been bitterly denounced for refusing to enter into something which was absolutely opposed to everything for which it stood. Ho had always been opposed to tho doctrine of striking often and striking hard,'for h« believed that tho time had come when tho strike was out of date and out of place in a rational civilised community. But he would not say he was opposed to a strike -under any circumstances, for just as circumstances'might arise where war was the only possible course, so it might bo that tho strike would be tho only way by which men could maintain and defend their liberties. Theso were the only circumstances under which tho strike weapon should be used. He was in agreement with the other people that a strike might be necessary, but the difference was that they put it at one end and he put it at the other. Those in New Zealand who had adopted methods of violence declared they had to do so because tho Arbitration Court had broken down, but whoso fault was it if this was the fact? Tho workers were far .more numerous than the capitalists, and they would have no need to strik.o anywhere if they would only strike at tho ballot box. If the court was not right, they must make it right; if the j law was not what it ought to be, they must make it as it ought to be. It was in the hands of the workers themselves to right the law and organise the court just in the way they wanted. Tho questions of most serious concern to the people were questions that could not bo touched with or settled by any strike of any sort that could possibly be organised. So long as a strike fought for a high wage scale, leaving untouched the power that fixed prices, then no matter how far up wages might go the workers might find that their purchasing power was less rather than greater, owing to the increased prices of things that they had to buy. Could anyone toll him how by a strike they would be able to control prices ? It could not bo done.

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