PUTTING DOWN STRIKES.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 314, 28 May 1913, Page 4

PUTTING DOWN STRIKES.

Our industrial arbitration laws do not prevent strikes, as they were designed to. Instead of being beneficial in their operation, they have too frequently proved a curse. Under the Arbitration Act the lot of the worker has vastly improved, but he does not seem to realise this as he should do. He agitates for legislation, and once he lias secured it he accepts all the. benefits that are coming to him under its aegis, and the moment it fails to suit his inclinations he deliberately casts it aside and ignores it. Arbitration awards, in fact, count for nothing with one class of worker when he wishes to deviate from their application. The trouble is, naturally, to devise some effective means of punishment for those who go on strike, which will not reflect upon the wives and children of the strikers. In this connection the June issue of Life, commenting on the Broken Hill strike, which was a wilful and deliberate infraction of a law which had been expressly passed for the safeguarding and benefitting of the working classes, makes an excellent suggestion. It suggests that all men who strike, in direct defiance of an arbitration court award, should be disfranchised. "The loss of the franchise," it says, "in such a case, is just, for why should those who break the law be allowed to have a share in the business of making it?" The Melbourne Age expresses a similar opinion, and points out that such a suggestion, if put into practical effect, would '•'enlist the whole influence of even the fanatics in the labor unions against a strike." Our contemporary says: Does any man in bis sober senses sr:->-pose that this strike would ever hnvo matured, or been seriouslv though o'. even bv the demagogue*, if the law h':d said: "Well, yon may strike if you like, but if yon do von will not be able to vote next election"? The mere suggestion of a strike under such a menace would have sent the Federal members and the State member flvin." post haste to Tiroken Hill bcgiring. and imploring the workers to do their duty and obev the law. . . . The great virtue of the suggested law is (his- Tt would cornpel every T.ah-.ir leader, for the s;:!-:, 1 of

his political ambition or for the sake of his political skin, to preach peace instead of war, and to labor to prevent strikes instead of causing them. The suggestidn is an admirable one, and' if embodied in our legislation it would prove a penalty that would be much more effective and dreaded by those who strike than the voluntary martyrdom of fine and imprisonment. There is an old American proverb that says, "Many a mule stands knee-deep in the meadow grass gazing wistfully out across the barren common," and this is far too often the attitude of labor. If some of our Labor agitators were turned out to gain a precarious living upon the common, they would begin to appreciate the delights of the meadow, li we rob them of such an access they will probably be less inclined to kick a hole in the fence of prosperity.