The Gisborne Standard AND COOK COUNTY GAZETTE. Published every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday Morning. Thursday, September 4, 1890. THE GREAT CONTEST.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume IV, Issue 502, 4 September 1890, Page 2

The Gisborne Standard AND COOK COUNTY GAZETTE. Published every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday Morning.

Thursday, September 4, 1890. THE GREAT CONTEST.

Be just and fear not; Let all the ends thou aim’st at be thy country's, Thy God’s, and truth's.

History has been making so rapidly within the last twenty years that the timid mind is overwhelmed by the changes that are taking place. Dear old Tories cannot eschew many of the silly ideas entertained by their grandmammas, and every new step taken they regard as another step on the road to destruction. But somehow the world always manages to right itself notwithstanding the gloomy predictions, and things go on better than ever they did. When Labor (to use a collective term) first discovered that it had a soul which it dared call its own the capitalist was shocked, and could hardly believe his senses. But through the efforts of a few men who have submitted to the bitterest persecution, and to indignities from which only a very strong mind could fail to shrink, the tyranny of Capita! is being borne down, and the most selfish capitalists have come to admit that man is made for some higher purpose than to be a slave, while there are those who fatten and live riotously on the wealth produced by the laborer. The day was when Unionism was made criminal by law, and history also records that the “ free-men ” of Great Britain have been compelled to work at a miserable wage fixed by law. All that is now of the past. A wonderful movement has been steadily progressing during the last few months, as the present crisis has forcibly brought home to us. We have already said that we consider the leaders on the Labor side have acted recklessly in precipitating this great struggle. Possibly they thought their terms would be conceded before the trouble had been allowed to grow to any grave dimensions. Whatever may have been their thoughts it is useless attempting to discern them now, when the present position requires, all our attention, and we have no hesitation in saying that the strike has shown us one of the grandest traits in human character. It has proved that when laboring men have pledged themselves to stand by each other they are prepared to make very large sacrifices and resist the most tempting (offers made to them to betray their comrades. All that we hear of the enormous losses Labor is inflicting on itself only adds further testimony to the loyalty of those men who hold firm to their colors while Capital is chuckling that it has won the day. And Labor, too, has arrayed against it the great weight of those whose sympathy has been alienated directly they were themselves put to some inconvenience. The majority never pause to think whether the larger proportion of the blame should not be placed on other shoulders than those of Labor—whether one side may not be the more blameable because it sought not to prevent the struggle. How many people are there who really know the cause of the present difficulty? We will tell them simply, It arose because the shipowners of Australia sought to suppress the spread of Unionism. The Marine Officers had certain grievances which they represented to the Shipowners’ Association, but they were quietly ignored. Then it was proposed that the Maritime Officers’ Asso. ciatlon should affiliate with the Labor organisations, There was no quietly ignoring this move, on the part of the shipowners. They immediately took umbrage, and dared the officers to take any such step, but this did not prevent the proposal being carried into efiect. Then the shipowners discovered that there were grievances which required to be remedied, and they came down a peg from their domineering position at first, and said they would be willing to make an effort to adjust things fairly if the officers would secede from the organisation with which they had affiliated. Of

course the request would not be listened to at that period, and so the thing gradually became an open battle. To us it seems a great mistake for the labor organisations to have affiliated with the officers, whose interests are so different, but once having pledged themselves who can say their conduct has been anything but honorable in thus sacrificing their own immediate interests, and even risking a great blow to Unionism itself, to remain true to their promise ? It has been said the Union Company had no quarrel and ought not to have been dragged into the struggle, that their employees were admittedly well paid, and made no complaint as against the Company. Now what better proof could we have of the sacrifice those men were willing to make ? They unhesitatingly agreed to quit first-class situations—for their own gain? No to do what they considered their duty— to help their fellow-men in the great stuggle. It wag nat for them to ask the why and wherefore—they had entrusted the management of things to what they deemed to bejwiser heads than their own, and* then||they

remained true to their pledge. But why, it will be asked, was the battle not fought without interfering with the Union Company ? That is where we blame the Australian leaders, but they may have been acting on information which is not disclosed to us at this distance. What we do know is that the Union Company joined the Shipowners’ Association, and were therefore pledged to assist in a struggle against the Unions. The latter made no attempt to interfere with the interprovincial New Zealand trade until the Company took on free laborers. Then the battle began in grim earnest. VVe repeat that, while deploring the strike and expressing the belief that it could have been avoided, we feel proud of men who to fulfil their pledge will make the sacrifices that have been made by Unionists in New Zealand. While the strike lasts a great deal of inconvenience must be submitted to, but our opinion is that after all it will be for the best. Unionism will never be stamped out, but, whatever the result, the men must receive a lesson that will be of great good in the future, that will teach them that their power is so great that it can only be safely entrusted to men who are endowed with great wisdom, and those leaders will hesitate before plunging the Unions into struggles that must be injurious to all. There are, it must be confessed, greedy and short-sighted men among laborers as there are inordinately selfish men among capitalists, and there never yet was a movement in which men were not found to urge the most violent courses, but it is not fair to select such to enable one to judge rightly on the subject. The outcome of this great strike will probably be a compromise. Miserly paid clerks (with their starched shirts, and stand-up collars), many of whom prefer flunkeyism to a manly independence, will soon tire of the novelty of doing real honest work such as is done by toilers whom they despise, and by whom they are despised in turn. Those lawyers who have experienced what a lumper’s work is really like will soon again turn their attention to the fat clients who support a profession that is barricaded in a way which no Union has yet thought of imitating, and which proportionately contains more black sheep than any other organisation. And as to the “ free laborers,” even supposing Capital scores a victory, it will soon be found that the very men who are now termed “free laborers,” will, directly they have finished a kind of apprenticeship at the expense of those who are now employing them, turn round and form another Union or join one already in existence. Under all circumstances there is an affinity between workmen that never can exist amongst capitalists. The very life blood of the workman—all that he has and can hope for in this world—is at stake, and thus a natural bond of sympathy is created ; but all there can be between capitalist and capitalist is the value of dead metal or paper money that would be worthless without labor.

With regard to the ample reports that are being published by the Press we should like so point out another feature of the struggle in which the workmen are at a great disadvantage. On the one hand those who have to be dealt with are shrewd business men whom experience has taught to carefully weigh every word before it is publicly uttered, while on the side of Labor the blunt outspokenness of men in the workroom gets introduced in public, and is soon flashed through the wires to hundreds of newspapers. In any affair of the kind there are also a few empty prattlers who indulge in bombast without imagining the harm they do their cause, and even this is not the worst part of it, for if a few larrikins upset a cabbage cart the blame falls upon laborers who may have had less to do with it than the victim himself. Or, to give a more ridiculous illustration, if an indiscreet and irresponsible workman laughingly cracks a ioke at the expense of an excitable publican, he may find the Labor cause disgraced by having the joke published in every paper in the colony as if it was really meant in all seriousness. Labor makes many mistakes, and like everything else that is not infallible, will continue to do so to the end of the chapter. but let it have fair play. The Union trouble is bound to find its own level in time, though unfortunately in the interim many innocent individuals wilt have to suffer. Our belief is that Australasia is now being made the battleground of a fight that will have a worldwide effect, that will soon wake our great competitors, the Germans, from the thraldom they have patiently endured, and be the deathblow of many of the white slave drivers in the American republic.