PUBLIC OPINION.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 9212, 15 April 1908, Page 1

PUBLIC OPINION.

FROM YESTERDAY'S NEWSPAPERS. (By Telegraph.) A MATTER OF ADMINISTRATION. What is more urgently wanted than an amendment, and improvement . of the law is an amendment of the Government's administration of it. Th/re will be little profit in amending the law i.n any case if it is to be made a victim of political expediency and reduced to nullity by non-enforcement on one hand ana a quibbling interpretation of its meaning ou the other. No Act is worth passing if it is not to be properly and courageously administered, and 'there is small promise of such administration in a Ministry the sum total of whoso activity and courage in the past six weeks was Mr Millar's summary dismissal of Mr Pritchai'd. — "Tile Dominion." THE STRIKE. , Whether it imply lack of political courage or desire to avoid industrial disturbance, the failure ol : the Government in the Blackball case is a gva /c public scandal. More, it is calculated to breed a worse disturbance than aDy it avoids. It is a direct incitement to the support of future strikes in *3efiance of the law. It is a stultification of the mandate of Parliament that converts the Conciliation Amendment Act into a new machine of industrial vvar in order to preserve a momentary t>nJ pusillanimous peace. — " Evening Post."

I CLASSIFICATION OF LABOUR. j It might be that the best scheme of | classification possible would be itself too much a cause of dissatisfaction • among workers to be practicable, but it must be v allowed that any feasible scheme of classification that would, rid our system of industrial arbitration of the incubus of the dead level of labour which it carries on its back at present would tqnd considerably to improve its claims to be considered an ideal system. Until the Government's proposals ; in this connection assume some definite form, it is impossible to judge of wh.xt measure of success they are likely to achieve. It is difficult to feel sanguine as to the issue in face of the statement I made recently by the Minister of Labour that grading seemed out of the question as far as Labour was concerned, and he did not know by what process it could be effected. — " Otago Daily Times." ARBITRATION AND STRIKES. . The Prime Minister correctly says that we cannot have a law against strikes and strikes at the same time, but the situation is not assisted by the Government simply looking on and refusing to interfere when so much of the responsibility for setting the law in motion and of the authority for enforcing the law lies with the Government.- Apparently the law can be enforced against an employer, but not against a labour union, and it is plain that unless this inequitable state of affairs is -very soon amended the Act must break down of its own .weight, because a crude sense of justice is innate with the great majority of the people of the dominion. — "New Zealand Herald." THE NEW MINISTRY. In Mr Asquith and Sir Edward Grey, Mr Lloyd George, Mr Morley and Mr Gladstone, Mr Haldane, Mr Birr ell, Mr Sydney Buxton and Mr John Burns, the Liberals, possess representatives who compare more than favourably with the members of the late Unionist Ministry, not only in their natural ability and their political but in their conscientious devotion to their high public, duties. But strong 'as the new Ministry is, it will undoubtedly need all its resources to stem the reaction against Liberalism that will assail it on the one hand and the risks involved in a close alliance I with the Socialists, Labourites and the Irish Nationalists on the other.— " Auckland Star."