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Page 11
But I for one do not expect these experiences, especially in America: for
here probably enough men have already become property holders to make a
sufficient balance of power for the preservation of property. If not, the
first step toward ensuring civilization, is helping enough men to develop
into property holders, and _continue_ property holders, which general
experience declares that they will not unless they develop their property
themselves.
AN EXPERIMENT IN SYNDICALISM
During the last twenty years New Zealand has tried many social and
economic experiments; these experiments have been made by her own
Legislature, and her own people; and as a rule they have been remarkably
successful: during the last few months she has had the experience of a new
one conducted by strangers, and made at her expense. Fortunately there is
reason to believe that this one will be found to have resulted in benefit
to New Zealand and its people, while it may prove of service to older and
larger countries. It is probable that the most widely known of New
Zealand's experiments is that which aimed at doing justice to employers
and employees alike by the substitution for the Industrial strike of a
Court of Arbitration, fairly constituted, on which both Workers and
Employers were equally represented. This law has been branded by the
supporters of the usual Strike policy with the name of "Compulsory
Arbitration," the object being to discredit it in the eyes of the workers,
as an infringement of their liberty. The title is unfair and misleading.
Unlike most laws, it never has been of universal application either to
Workers or Employers, but only to those among them that chose to form
themselves into industrial Unions, and to register those Unions as subject
to the provisions of the Statute. The purpose of the Statute was an appeal
to the common sense of the people, by offering them an alternative method
of settling disputes and securing that fair-play for both parties which
experience had shown could seldom be secured by the strike. The law, which
was first introduced in 1894, had gradually appealed both to workers and
employers, as worth trying, and before the close of the last century it
had rendered the country prosperous, and had attracted the attention of
thoughtful people in many other parts of the world to the "Country Without
Strikes." Efforts were made in several countries to introduce the
principle of the New Zealand Statute, but with very little success, as it
was generally opposed both by workers and employers:--the workers feeling
confident they could obtain greater concessions by the forceful methods of
the strike, and the employers suspecting that any Court of Arbitration
would be likely to give the workers more than, without arbitration, they
could compel the employers to surrender.
In the mean time the statutory substitute for the strike continued to
succeed in New Zealand. Nearly every class of town workers, and some in
the country, had formed Unions, and registered them under the arbitration
law. With a single trifling exception, that was speedily put an end to by
the punishment of the Union with the alternative of heavy fine or
imprisonment, the country was literally as well as nominally a country
without a strike. And it was something more than that: its prosperity
increased year by year, and its production of goods--agricultural,
pastoral, and manufactured--increased at a pace unequalled elsewhere. Yet
the prosperity was most apparent in its effect on the conditions of the
workers: under the successive awards of the arbitration court, wages had
steadily increased until they had reached a point as high as in similar
trades in America, while the cost of living was very little more than half
the rate in any town in the United States. To all intelligent observers
these facts were evident, and could not be concealed from the workers in
other countries, especially in Australia, as the nearest geographically to
New Zealand and commercially the most closely connected.
The effect, however, on the workers of Australia was not what might have
been expected. Attempts had been made by some of the State Legislatures to
introduce arbitration laws more or less like the New Zealand statute, but
with very partial success. From the first these laws were opposed by the
leaders of the Labor Unions, who naturally saw a menace to their influence
in the fact that they became subject to punishment if they attempted to
use their accustomed powers over their fellow unionists. The example of
New Zealand was lauded in the Australian Legislatures and newspapers, and
even in the courts, till at last a feeling of strong antagonism was
developed among the more advanced class of socialistic Labor men, and it
was decided by their leaders to undertake a campaign in the neighboring
Dominion against the system of settling industrial questions by courts,
and in favor of substituting the system of strikes, with their attendant
power and profit to the Labor leaders. The first steps taken were sending
men from Australia or England on lecturing tours through New Zealand, to
create dissatisfaction with the Arbitration Courts by representing them as
leaning to the side of the employers, and ignoring the claims of the
workers. When this had gone on for about a year, workers of various
classes were induced to cross from Australia, and join the Unions in New
Zealand, for the purpose of influencing their fellow unionists to
disloyalty towards the system under which they were registered. These men
were generally competent workers and clever agitators, and many of them
soon obtained prominence and official position in the Unions. As was
natural, a good many of these new-comers were miners--either for coal or
gold--and many of them joined the miners' union at the great gold mine
known as the Waihi, from which upwards of thirty million dollars worth of
gold had been dug, and which was still yielding between three and four
million dollars a year. There were nearly a thousand miners employed
there, and all of them were members of a Union that was duly registered
under the Arbitration statute.
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