Page:"Red"·Fed·Memoirs-Hickey-1925.pdf/5



The morale of the scantily organised workers of New Zealand was badly broken by the Maritime Strike of 1890.

What little unionism remained at the conclusion of that historic struggle was a timid and weakly thing. For in those days men paid dearly (as they sometimes pay to-day) for possessing the courage to insist upon the right to organise, and since working men the world over are largely the same, there were but few with the determination or knowledge essential to carry on under the adverse circumstances prevailing.

But close on the heels of the disastrous ending of the Maritime Strike, came a battle at the polls, and men who had seen their organisation disappear before the attacks of the Monied Power, felt that by means of Parliament there was an opportunity of securing that justice to which they were entitled, and they flung themselves into the campaign with energy and enthusiasm.

Though indifferently organised at that time, the employing class as a whole were almost unanimously behind the Conservative Party of Sir Harry Atkinson, the then Premier, and regarded the advent of a Liberal Government headed by men like John Ballance and Richard Seddon with almost the same feelings as their confreres of to-day would regard a Government in charge of H. E. Holland