The Wanganui Chronicle. "NULLA DIES SINE LINEA." SATURDAY, AUGUST 29, 1908^ AN IMPARTIAL REPORT.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume L, Issue 12145, 29 August 1908, Page 4

The Wanganui Chronicle. "NULLA DIES SINE LINEA." SATURDAY, AUGUST 29, 1908^ AN IMPARTIAL REPORT.

Bt the last Home mail there oaine^to hand a summary of the report presented to the Secretary of State for the Home Department by Mr E. Area, the Commissioner appointed to make investigation into the Wages Boards and Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Acts of Australia and New Zealand. Mr Ares has evidently devoted muck caro to the preparation of his report, which is couched in impartial language, and which betokens a rery intelligent recognition of the conditions prerailing in this Dominion. While conceding that the Industrial and Conciliation Act is a "real force" in New Zealand, Mr Ares Tory correctly sums up the estimation in which it is held .by the people most interested when, he says: ''By employers it is disliked, tolerated, or accepted; by employees it is suspected, tolerated, or welcomed." As to the awards that hare been made, Mr Ares thinks that "In those cases in which advances hare taken place on more than a single oocasion, a dispas-' sionate survey does not lead to the conclusion that any very extravagant advantages hare been granted. . , . But the real conditions of industry are Tery far from being determined ■ simply by the wages that hare to be paid, and, if laid, bare, I think that the attendant conditions, when coupled with increasing inefficiency, lack of interest in work, and trade union intervention,: would be found to be a greater cause of dissatisfaction among employers than tho nominal rates fixed. There; is, of course, the difficulty of the less competent, but in themselves the rates-, would probably hot often be resented if they were more uniformly accompanied by thoughtful and loyal service. : As a leading employer said: 'Men will not realise how willing we are to pay good Vages for good, men.'" Although it is evident that Mr Ares has biaert careful to account to the full for advantages which may be. eaid to hare accrued from the Act, and while he judiciously discounts the Talue of mtich of the evidence that was submitted to him, be makes it perfectly clear that ; in his opinion the system has failed just-where it was hoped that it would prove most beneficial, to wit, in the preservation of "industrial peace." "It is/ he say*, "the easy creation of 'disputes' which represents for many the' chief failure of the New Zealand Act. The absence of actire dispute, in the form aither of artrike- or; J6ck-out, does not necessarily imply ;ihe existene* of ft condition ofoieal; industrial peace, Mtj more thai^/in/^w^ Zealand does the rewgriitioh'of'a^'aispirte' indicate that conditions of .active and unrestrained conflict are impending. • . . The number of disputes has been undoubtedly increased directly by the Act. -v

The real miaoTiief of the Act in this connection appears to consist hot so much in the powers exercised under the Act as in th© way in which, and the circumstance* in which, these powers are often iiiToked; s, hab.it of litigious, and therefore non-friendly 'diepute'yhas been farmed, and a class created of

those who make it their business to inculcate the habit where absent. Evidence, says one of those who in New Zealand has had much to do with tho working of the Act, and who is not a partisan, has been forthcoming of the prominence of the agitator as the organiser of disputes over and over again.' It is necessary, however, to distinguish between those who are the genuine propangandists in the cause of and who, detecting conditions of inequality, which seem to them to call for remedy, endeavour so to influence those concerned that reform may be secured, from others who make it their business to formulate grievances, who deliberately promote cases to come before the Court, and who gain directly or indirectly by the very dispute which they have done much to initiate. All are th& so-called 'agitators' and to them, as a class, it is easy to be unjust, forgetting that some who are so described are simply courageous and sincere. It must also in justice be mentioned that the power of the Court to dismiss cases brought before thorn if 'frivolous' is hardly jever exercis;ed; although, as seen, fresh awards are very frequently refused. It is, however, clear that, tho Act haa helped to create a class of men who are real fomenters of discord, professional in the worst sense of the word ,and widely regarded as active and self-interested disturbers of industrial peace." This is precisely the evil to which we have so often referred, and which we believe to be mainly responsible for the failure of the Act. During the past few years the professional agitator has flourished abundantly. He has kept the Arbitration Court working at high pressure from year's end to year's end, and this, too, during a period of prosperity; when, under ordinary circumstances, disputes would have been very few and far between and peace and contentment would have prevailed in our industrial life! Thesa men have everything to lose and nothing to gain by the consummation of industrial peace. . Their business is to inspire discontent and to promote strife, and the records of the Court bear testimony to the lamentable extent to which organised labour has permitted itseU to be used to their, advantage: Mr Ayes recognises, as indeed every impartial observer must recognise, that there can be no such thing as "industrial peace," in the best and truest sense of the term, so long aa professional agitators are permitted to "rule the roost."