Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 32.djvu/246

210 2IO HARVARD LAW REVIEW time, about 1884, has become a desideratum of the imion, is re- garded by the unions as a privilege. The Prime Minister was very- much displeased; but he did not attempt to make any further use of his supposed power under the regulation. I have felt it necessary to state these three exceptions at some length. In the first case, to speak summarily, the trouble was mainly political. In the third case the Court had no jurisdiction — it was forbidden to touch the root of the trouble. But the second case was a clear case of strike for conditions of work which ought to have been submitted to the Court. It is satisfactory to find that in none of those cases was the strike owing to the failure, or alleged failure, of the Court to grant justice in any dispute as to which it had jurisdiction. It is significant also that the widespread strike of August, 191 7, was in a dispute which was outside the jurisdiction of this Court, and which was not submitted to the court of the state in which the dispute occurred. Sympathetic Strike The occurrences of August, 19 17, have led to the consideration of the proper mode of dealing with the "sympathetic" strike. The difficulty is mainly a psychological difficulty — it might be called a moral difficulty. What is a man to do who wants to lead a peaceful life, but whose comrades refuse to work in order to aid other unionists in their struggle with other employers? He wants to be true to unionism and his comrades. He hates the idea of taking advantage of his comrades' self-denial, of taking a job that one of them might get but for making common cause with those who have an alleged grievance: "The pathetic feature of the position is that most of the men think that by ceasing work in sympathy with the New South Wales railway men they are doing what is virtuous — sacrificing themselves for their fellows: or, putting the matter in another way, they are afraid of being charged with perfidy towards other unionists. If men in a union could be brought to see that their duty to the public, to their humankind, is higher than their duty to other unions (whether the other unions are right or wrong) the problem of s)anpathetic strikes would be nearly solved. If they could be brought to weigh the probabilities of advantage coming to the fighting union from the sympathetic strike against the