A possible exemplification of the efficacy of the Act occurred at the end of 1896, when the engineers employed in the Australian trade of the Union Steamship Company of New Zealand asked that {291} their wages might be raised to the rate which had prevailed before the financial troubles. They took advantage of the increased traffic caused by the holidays in order to emphasise their demands. The engineers of the ships plying in New Zealand waters made a similar request, which was at once acceded to by the Company, but did not attempt to exert undue pressure. I am not prepared to state that the difference in attitude was due to the Conciliation and Arbitration Act of the latter country, but the coincidence is calculated to encourage that belief. The Managing Director of the Company (Mr. James Mills) told me that he was a hearty supporter of compulsion, not so much because he believed in arbitration, as because a strike or lock-out was obviated, and the parties to a dispute, often trivial at the outset, were brought together before they had been embittered by mutual recriminations. Mr. Kingston, the Premier of South Australia, and the principal promoter of the South Australian Act, has written in a similar strain:-- "Conciliation Boards should be established in anticipation of the differences they are designed to prevent. On the occasion of a great strike, the public cries out for conciliation. Suggestions are received from all quarters recommending Conferences and Arbitration; but when war has been declared, and the disputants, as it were, are at each other's throats, each hopeful of ultimate success, they are seldom in the mood to listen to peacemakers. If either party fears the result of the {292} contest, it may favour pacific counsels. There is, however, a vehement probability that the stronger party will reject all overtures and insist on an unconditional surrender and all the advantages which victory can command. The dispute is then determined, not on its merits, but by sheer strength. The vanquished, smarting under a sense of defeat and injustice, capitulate only with the view to the early renewal of the struggle under more favourable circumstances."[11] (5) A large proportion of the workmen of Australasia are convinced believers in Protection in the widest sense of the word. As far as their opinion can be ascertained from the representation of Labour in Parliament, it is unanimous in Victoria, South Australia, and New Zealand. In New South Wales, as has been seen, the Labour Members have, for the sake of solidarity, sunk the fiscal issue; but the majority are Protectionists, and have proposed that the question of the tariff should be settled for a fixed period by a plebiscite. Thereby they believe that they will secure Protection and continue to be unfettered in their support of the more advanced party. In Queensland, also, the Labour programme states that the fiscal issue is not to be regarded as a party question.