Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/739

LABOUR TROUBLt?S IN NEW ZEALAND 717 stated. The Union Company's intercolonial boats were first delayed in Australia, and on their using free labour to get them away, their crews were called out on arrival in New Zealand, and though the Unions generously offered not to interfere with their coastal boats if the Company would consent to give up its Aus- tralian trade until further orders from them, the offer was refused s free labour was advertised for and war was declared. Until thi; time the Union Company had had strictly union crews. In describing the events that followed, I must premise that I am speaking of the Port of Lyttelton only, but the experience of other ports was almost identical; moreover, Lyttelton being the chief port of the Canterbury plah?s and therefore able to draw large supplies of labour from the country, took the lead, and was able to send assistance to other ports. Before the strike broke out here, the price of produce at Sydney was rapidly advancing to famine rates, and naturally our farmers were anxious to reap the benefit. The strikers, therefore, at once had the farmers arrayed agah?st them, and it was mainly owing to their assistance that the Union Company won such complete victory. Immediately after the Seamen's Union called out their men from the Union Company's steamers, the wharf labourers went out, and the whole work of the port was carried on by volunteers and free labourers. For a week the scene in port was a novel one. Men of independent means, members of athletic clubs, bank clerks, schoohnasters, &c., were to be seen loading and unloading ballast, coal, and general cargo, shunting trucks on the wharves, in fact carrying on the whole work of the port. It was astonishing how soon they adapted themselves to their new work; for the first two days there was naturally considerable confusion, but after that the work was carried on in the most orderly manner. At the end of the first week regular gangs of free labourers from the country were organised, and in a month's time it would have been dif?cult for an onlooker to realise that such a thing as a stri]?e was in existence. Of course this irruption of free labour brought about other complications with the unions; first the cooks and stewards on board the steamers objecte?l to provide meals for the free labourers, and went out. (As a volunteer during the first week I can only say I wish they had gone out before: I can still smell the salt junk they provided for us on the first day.) This difficult)' was got over by the leading residents of Christ- chm'ch combining to send down cooked provisions to the port.