1900 - Coalmininghistorypa.org

xlviil ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc.
dustrial war; by rejecting the barbarous methods of the past; by respecting
the rights of all and marching on with the progressive tendency
of events. It points the way and shows that the working
people, strong in numbers, in reason and rectitude, can achieve their
emancipation without recourse to any act that will prove repulsive to
the best instincts of human nature.''
During the recent strike in the Anthracite regions arbitration was
proposed and rejected. In view of that fact, in what way can another
system be brought about? Shall there be a State Board of Arbitrators,
and shall arbitration be made compulsory?
It is unquestionably true that an act under which one of the parties
to an industrial dispute has the right to bring all other parties before
a public tribunal, smacks very much of State regulation of labor.
This has in effect been brought about in New Zealand, and so far, the
workings of the arbitration laws in effect there, have not been attended
with very deleterious effects. In the first place if the parties
to a labor dispute wish to settle their differences in their own way,
the State does not meddle with them. Then, in the second place,
had the law proved obnoxious, it would have been abrogated long
ere this. Speaking of this feature of the law, the author of a recent
publication explaining very fully the workings of the arbitration
tribunal in New Zealand says:
"The only serious adjustment, beyond the theoretical objection to
state interference in any form which has been brought against this
law by English writers, has been a statement that it has hampered
enterprise and checked the growth of manufactures in the colony."
New Zealanders know this to be quite baseless, for they know that
the manufacturers of their colony have fully participated in the
prosperity of the last five years. For some years past labor in
almost every trade has been fully employed; the numbers of the workless
have fallen progressively; new factories have been opened and
buildings erected, and the shop keepers with whom the working
classes deal, admit that business is better and debts fewer than at
any time in the last twenty years in the colony. The annual report
of the Chamber of Commerce and the periodical reviews of the trade
and business published by the New Zealand newspapers of both sides
in politics tell the same tale. But the briefest and most convincing
argument for disabusing the minds of any who may favor the idea
that the New Zealand Arbitration act has hampered industry, is
found in the following figures, which give the number of hands employed
in the registered factories of the colony for the past five years.
It may be explained that the factory, in New Zealand, means every
workship, small and large, and that registration is universal.