The Waikato Times, THAMES VALLEY GAZETTE, AND KAWHIA ADVOCATE. Established Thirty-Four Years. THE OLDEST DAILY NEWSPAPER IN THE WAIKATO. THE LARGEST CIRCULATION OF ANY DAILY PAPER SOUTH OF AUCKLAND. FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 1906. THE TRADES DISPUTES BILL

Waikato Times, Volume LVII, Issue 8003, 7 September 1906, Page 2

The Waikato Times, THAMES VALLEY GAZETTE, AND KAWHIA ADVOCATE. Established Thirty-Four Years. THE OLDEST DAILY NEWSPAPER IN THE WAIKATO. THE LARGEST CIRCULATION OF ANY DAILY PAPER SOUTH OF AUCKLAND. FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 1906. THE TRADES DISPUTES BILL

The Trades Uuion Congress is doubtleas keeping an eye on the House of Lords. The Trades Disputes Bill will come before the Upper Chamber soon after Parliament reopens for the autumn session, and the hereditary legislators, will, if they dare, throw it out. The Congress doubtless wishes to signify to them that they had better not, and has implied this hint in the resolution cabled yesterday —" That no Trades Disputes Bill will be satisfactory unless it secures complete immunity of uuion funds from litigation." If the Bill of Mr Hudsou, the Labour member, which the Government was forcej to adopt in preference to its own, and which has been modified in committee and passed by the Commons, is rejected by the Lords, Labour will still insist upon full satisfaction of its demands. A majority in the country would undoubtedly support the Labour view of the question as against the Upper House, and that Chamber would be in peril of its existence. On the face of it, as Mr J. Ramsay Mac Donald admitted in a recent article in the National Review, the claim at first seems objectionable. Englishmen inquire why trades unions should be placed in such a position as to escape liability for the acts of their otlicers. Here in New Zealand and Australia, such a questiouis bound to be asked, for with us trades unions ate subject to the law of agency. " Hence, with some triumph," says Mr Mac Donald, in the article referred to, t( The AttornoyGeneral, in introducing the Government Bill, referred to the Act passed by the New South Wales Legislature imposing responsibility upon union funds for the approved acts of duly accredited agentg. The reply, however, was obvious. That act was a natural and proper part of a general body of law defining the rights and privileges of trade unions as corporate associations." Our readers will doubtless realise that the Industrial Arbitration and Conciliation Act has led to making the status of industrial unions, whether of employers or employed, among us quite different from that which obtains at Home. There labour and < apital are iu a stale of armed peace, diversified with outbursts of war. The only weapon of the workers is the strike, either effected or threatened. The capitalists' armoury contains not only the lock-out, but power to dismiss individual leaders of the men. Therefore if the State makes associations on each side liable for damages the capitalists would have the best of the arrangement. But, more than this, it is comparatively easy under such a law ic;' employers to obtaiu damages from the unions, but nearly impossible for the men to take corresponding action. Mr Mac Donald puts it thus " A union in dispute with an employer pickets his premises, drives away his customers, damages his trade. The loss is assessed and has to be made good from the union funds. The employer in dispute with his workmen locks out his men, prevents them from finding work elsewhere tiil peace is restored, hurls them down from a tolerably secure footiug upon the cliff-face into the depths of poverty and debt below. How can the victimised workman pursue his employer for damages? But such a claim on the part of the workman is the counterpart cf the claim for compensation for injured property and profi'3 on the part of the employer;' If British statesmen do not see tit to adopt measures for preventing commercial war, they should at least try to secure that the conflict is carried on upon fair terms Such i*, broadly speaking, the effect of the Labour party s demand.