classes are not fully satisfied with the results obtained since the eventful days of '91. Freehold exponents, allied politically and otherwise, have been demanding a wider application of the freehold,—which the Conservatives have promised to give them,—and the working classes continue to complain of laws existing and to clamor for others yet undrawn. They have even secured union preference in a multitude of industrial agreements and Arbitration Court awards, and now they cry for the establishment of union preference by statute. In New Zealand union labor has become so strong that men have actually been fined in courts of justice for failure to join labor unions when ordered by the courts to do so, in accordance with industrial agreements or awards.
But despite it all—despite the insistent, annual demands of the laborer, "Give us more," "Give us statutory union preference," "Give us this, give us that"—despite the solemn, indignant assurances of employers that business will be ruined, and that the labor laws are killing the country—despite all this, New Zealand continues to grow, in population and trade, in public and private wealth. And it will continue to prosper, as it has for the last twenty-two years, so long as the world prospers, and so long as it is as well governed as it has been since the reforming hand of John Ballance grasped the helm of the ship of state. New Zealand has a brilliant past, but it has a still more luminous future.
