THE "AUSTRALIAN REMEDY ”

IN the April number of the National Review appears an article by Pollio on "Strikes and the Australian Remedy." The general conclusion arrived at by that able writer appears to be that though "Australians have devised a substitute for strikes that is proving effective under Australian conditions," yet Compulsory Arbitration will absolutely fail as long as free imports and the Free Trade system are the guiding star of a nation. As one who, as a member of an Australian State Parliament, has had some practical experience of industrial legislation and its working, permit me to criticise at some length Pollio's conclusions.

With the latter portion of Pollio's deductions the present writer most cordially agrees. There is something ludicrously absurd about the setting up of Wages Boards and Arbitration Courts to fix standards of wages when goods may be imported from countries such as China and Japan where the cost of living is only a pitiful fraction of what it is in the importing country. How such British Free Trade Labourites as favour the institutions of such tribunals are going to get over this Himalayan obstacle the writer does not know. The Australian Labour (one-time) Free Traders in the Federal Parliament have long ago tacitly dropped their old fiscal creed and unobtrusively adopted Protection, most of them ingenuously trying to look as if they never hugged any other fiscal belief to their artless bosoms. There was no escape from this objurgation. To shut out the Chinese, the Japanese, the Javan and the Filipino and at the same time to allow their goods to come in free was recognised by nearly all able Labour men as the very culmination of political folly. Australia is a country that has no room for the cheap Asiatic, no room for the cheap product of Asiatic labour, and no room whatever for the Free Trade doctrines that lead

"What is

inevitably to the cheap goods and the cheap man. cheapness?" said a British statesman on one occasion; "cheapness is the half-pence wrung from the wretched pittance of the slave." Several ex-Free Trade members of the Federal Labour Party have professed themselves at various times as "fiscal atheists." Nevertheless these "fiscal atheists" support a Protectionist Government and are returned to Parliament by Protectionist constituencies. The logical sense of Australian Democracy is a hammer that is perpetually driving nails in the Free-Trade coffin.

Pollio's assertion, however, that "Australians have devised a remedy for strikes that is proving effective" is one which sadly lacks evidence to support it. That a number of trade disputes. have been settled by the Arbitration Court is perfectly true. That a large number have failed of settlement by these tribunals is also true. That the number of strikes which Arbitration does not prevent is increasing is evidently also true, for Australia last year had the painful experience of ninety-two strikes which raged in defiance of the existence of some half-dozen State and Federal tribunals, which were supposed at one time to be an absolute remedy for the Strike evil. Queensland, which has no State Arbitration Court, compares very well in the matter of infrequency of trade disputes with her neighbours who have set up an expensive judicial apparatus in the fond belief that industrial peace would henceforth "dovelike sit brooding" on the factories and mines where toil her urban and country population. It is necessary that the world should see clearly the cause of this apparent failure of a great principle.

One must first recognise that the Australian Labour Party, nominally one and undivided, contains a distinct line of cleavage. The aims of that body are undoubtedly Socialistic, but the name "Socialist" is not too popular in Labour circles, and some few years ago one State Labour Party rejected a motion to christen itself a Socialist body by a large majority. As a matter of fact the Labour legislators of Australia mistrust the extreme "Socialist" Party and the militant Socialists often denounce the Labourites as a party of trimmers. The Parliamentary body, by the necessities of its existence, must always consist mostly of fairly moderate men but the organisations behind them and

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controlling them are sometimes in the hands of extremists. The extremists are by no means enamoured of the Arbitration principle. Cordially, indeed, do many of them echo the cry of the Federal representative who cried exultantly in the midst of a Parliamentary discussion: "Give me the good old Strike!" Possibly the popularity of that bellicose sentiment in ultra-circles is due to the fact that the great Shearers' Strike of 1891 was really the cradle of the Australian Parliamentary Labour Party. "Abandon this insensate industrial civil war!" cried the employers of that era; put your men into Parliament and remedy your wrongs in a constitutional manner." The advice was taken, much to the surprise-probably disgust-of the givers who are now frequently advising the unions to ""'bout ship" and steer clear of all political entanglements. In this division of opinion in Labour ranks lies the real cause of the comparative inefficiency of Australian Arbitration. It is idle for a Court to give a decision when every one knows that if it be hostile to the claims of the workers they will probably refuse to be bound thereby. Of such refusals, unfortunately, there is no lack of instances. Of examples wherein organisations absolutely refused to submit their case to Arbitration at all but went out on strike regardless of the fact that they were thus guilty of a penal offence, there is, unhappily, no dearth in Australia. The recent Tramway Strike in Brisbane was precipitated while the plaint setting forth the men's grievances was awaiting the attention of the Arbitration Court, and the Conservative Party of Queensland pointed triumphantly to this circumstance as a violation of a fundamental principle of their opponents' platform. The truth is-Labour has not yet been educated up to the ideal of loyalty to its own ideal of a judicial settlement of trade disputes-particularly when that principle pinches Labour's toes. The writer well remembers a conversation he once had with a Labour member of a State Assembly—a man pledged, of course, to the principle of settling all industrial differences by judicial action. "Very good Court-That Federal Arbitration Court," said my friend. Splendid decision last week raising shearing rates to 25s. a hundred!" "But," queried the writer, " suppose the Court had lowered rates to below a pound a hundred?” Oh, well, if they did that, there'd be nothing left for it but to strike!" Evidently the goodness of the Arbitration principle has some severe limitations. There are quite a number

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of Australian workers who fancy that these tribunals were instituted for the express purpose of keeping up wages under all conditions, regardless of seasons, markets, competition, tariffs and other such irrelevant considerations.

Some time ago the powerful capitalistic combination known as the Coal Vend was mulcted in the sum of £50,000 for having acted" in restraint of trade." There can be no doubt that the decision was an eminently just one and in furtherance of the public interest. But certain recent strikes (particularly in New South Wales) "restrained trade" and crippled industry just as effectively as did the Coal Vend, and, though penalties in abundance are provided by the Statute, the strikers went off unpunished. And, it is obvious that any law that must-in default of being able to collect fines-enforce its decisions by imprisoning a vast number of men, must either see itself flouted or devote much of its time to covering the land with brand-new penitentiaries. In default of a new attitude on the part of the unions the Australian Arbitration Courts have arrived at a veritable cul-de-sac.

It must be said, to the credit of the Australian Labour Party, that from its ranks emanated the first demand for a judicial settlement of industrial quarrels. It must also be said that the opponents of that Party fought legislation of this kind as long as they could and prophesied every kind of evil as an inevitable resultant. To-day the chiefest weapon of Conservatism is the indignation (real or simulated) that its leaders express when they hold up Labour's defiance of its own Arbitration principle for public reprobation. The New South Wales Government has been busy of late devising an Amendment of the Act, in order to compel obedience to the mandates of the Court from both parties; but no observant man can have much faith in mere legislation until both sides affected by the decisions of judges are prepared to accept them whether they please or pinch the contending parties.

It must also be remembered that whatever limited measure of success Arbitration has secured in Australia has been achieved on a rising market." For the last ten years the continent has enjoyed splendid seasons, good prices, expanding trade, and— last but not least-an almost unlimited supply of loan money, with the result that the country is "booming " as it never boomed before. One consequence is, of course, that industries can afford

to pay good wages, to amend conditions and fulfil the requirements of the Court without sustaining serious injury. But such times cannot continue. In the ordinary course of things a drought must shortly occur and Australia is bound to meet a check, at no distant date, in her lavish reckless borrowing. During the period of depression which must ensue no Court can artificially keep up wages and the question arises as to what the employees will do when the tribunals decree a reduction in the rates of payment. Will the loyalty that failed in the good years when conditions were continually improving flourish like a green bay-tree when the Court lowers wages 5 or 10 per cent. to meet the necessities of an industry that must either pay lower wages or perish? It is, indeed, hard to believe it.

Mr. Ramsay MacDonald once said, after a visit to Australia :

The Australian thinks only of his own consumption, of himself as purchaser, of a composition which he can control at will, because it is on his own market. So he sits down and fits in the dovetailing parts of the scheme. If English industrial efficiency is too much for him he can prevent English goods from being landed, if that only increases capital's profits he can get a judge or a Board to declare what wages are to be paid; if that results in too high prices, he can fix a standard of profit beyond which public companies must not go, and a limit to prices beyond which consumers shall not be charged. Thus he builds up the industrial state of his dreams; thus he protects Australia against the world, the workman against the capitalist and the consumer against both. . . . Australia is a hothouse. Much of its labour legislation is a hothouse plant. I do not use these words to belittle it, but to describe its conditions. It is cultivation under glass.

But the most unhealthy" hothouse" stimulation to Australian industry arises from the continual tendency to boom the country with loan moneys. Never was that tendency more marked than at the present time and never were the results likely to be so calamitous. Wages, prices, rents are all phenomenally inflated and the pricking of the bladder is only a matter of a year or two. The question then arises: When the Arbitration Courts regulate payments and conditions to meet the new order of things in the deflated era, how will the worker receive the new dispensation? Judging by past experience one would be justified in forecasting a legion of industrial troubles fought out in the old barbaric fashion and an abundant crop of subsequent misery.

To those who persist in talking of the efficiency of Arbitration