THE RAILWAY CRISIS.
To THE EDITOR OF Tine "Scxcr.vrotc.")
SIR,—I trust to your usual fairness to allow me to say that in stating the case in your last issue between the railwaymen and the directors you have overlooked one reason for the attitude of the latter which is vital and, I think, all but con- clusive. It is this, that they are bound to give a service. The other trades which have recognised the Unions are not in that position. Cotton-spinners, engineers, boilermakers, &c., can shut down or lock out,—as, indeed, the last-named are now threatening. The railway directors cannot do so: they must go on. They would therefore be entirely at the mercy of an organisation which could ensure a general stoppage. Such a Union would be a dictator on all points which it chose to meddle with, and the directors would only register its decrees. Then farewell to dividends from at least all ordinary stocks, and to all railway development. As you say, if the Union were once " recognised " all railway servants would be virtually compelled to belong to it, and the directors would have "cut off their own heads." I think they would be far better advised to tight for their existence now, on the question of recognition, while they have a fair, nay, a great, chance of winning. And a victory now would enormously strengthen their position, as, if they were to make a point (as would.only be just) of keeping in their service all the "black- legs" who came to their assistance, even if comparatively inefficient, there would necessarily be left a large number of railwaymen.throughout the community anxious to get back to the good service they had left on the occasion of any future strike. That was an element in the loss by the men of the last Scotch railway strike. All this trouble arises from the false principle of collective bargaining, which employers in most trades have hitherto been too weak to resist. I have been urging them to do so for forty years, ever since Mr. Mill's recantation of his old, and I think sound, belief, and have long foreseen this crisis, which may force them to take action. That principle embodied in Trade-Unions has caused incalculable loss to the working and all other classes, and is, I believe, the chief cause of the unemployment we hear so much of. The law of supply and demand, the law of price, which, if let alone, automatically and justly, through a multitude of individual bargains, fixes the price of labour and of everything else that has a price, does in the long run far better for workers than collective bargaining can. No skill or eloquence in stating grievances, no statement of grievances at all, is needed; the higgling of the Market does all that, better than the best bargainer. If there is ever to be peace in the industrial world, or any check to the march of Socialism, it will be by employers combining not to bargain, never to bargain, but to fight every strike without regard to its merits. But I know that this view is at present under the cloud of the sentimental so-called "new economy," and I do not insist on it here. I take my stand on the essential difference of the case of the railways from that of any other trade,—namely, that in the latter a strike can be met by a passive resistance or a lock-out, while in the railway it must be fought by immediately getting in new men, under all the disadvantages of the new Trade Disputes Bill. I think that in this case the admission of the principle of recognition would be a greater public calamity than the most disastrous strike.—I am, Sir, &c., P.S.—The influence of public opinion on the railway strike in Victoria in 1903, and the case of the Post Office here, are not to the point in the present dispute. These are both public services, and the managers of them had behind them the public, who will not allow their own department to be defeated by its employ4s. The directors have no such support. Nearly every Man is a critic of, and very few have any goodwill towards, railway directors, while it is_a very cheap exercise of benevolence to support workers in a demand for a rise in wages at other people's expense. It would therefore be most unfair to attach much weight to public opinion in this matter, or ask the directors to submit themselves to it.
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