Page:Life·of·Seddon•James·Drummond•1907.pdf/287

 employer would admit that peaceful settlement by arbitration was preferable. It was always a risky experiment to put an untried weapon into inexperienced hands, and allowance must be made for unexpected casualties. There had been casualties, but not more than might reasonably be expected. If they viewed the results of the Act, they might feel fairly satisfied with them. At any rate, if they looked abroad and saw what was being done in America and England, they ought to conclude that they were better off under the Act than other people were without it.”

Mr. G. Blackwell, who is managing director of the largest woollen mill in the colony, and is another man with wide experience of the Court, in representing the Canterbury Employers’ Association before the committee of the House of Representatives in 1900, said that the association was thoroughly in accord with the principles laid down in the Act. If the amending Bill then before the House was amended in the directions suggested by the association, it was strongly of opinion that it would be impossible to conceive of a more useful measure, properly administered, that would prove of such immense benefit to all sections of the industrial community. “There is no antagonism now,” he concluded, “whatever there may have been in the past; we desire to co-operate in making the present Bill a workable measure.”

The federated boot operators and boot-manufacturers have now been before the Court three times, referring their troubles to it each time that an award ran out. On the last occasion, in 1901, at the conclusion of the case, the President of the Court complimented the delegates from both sides on the manner in which they had conducted the case. He said that the Court sat for the purpose of dealing in the most patient and exhaustive manner with the questions submitted, and with an earnest desire to bring the parties to a mutual agreement, if possible. The Act was capable of being worked in the interests of both employers and employés, and was productive of great good. If the Court lost sight of the central feature of the Act—the mutual good-will which should exist between employers and workmen—and attempted in any way to deal with the system in