"Sounds like home, doesn't it? To do away with strikes. You see the employing class, which all around the world gets what it wants and controls every government, had put itself back of the arbitration law. It had discovered that the law could be made to be a good thing, so it was at the dictation of this class that the amendments were passed. What the injunction judges do in America, or try to do, the law was to do in New Zealand. "Except that not Judge Goff nor Judge Guy, nor any other injunction judge of our own happy clime, has dared to go quite so far as to declare that all striking everywhere is a crime to be punished with imprisonment. "How are you going to compel men to work? Why, thus, said the government of New Zealand. Put them in jail if they do not like the terms of their employment." Mr. Russell then gives an account of the miners' strike, above referred to, which he points out was ended by the labor department paying the miners' fines. He concludes:-- "Mr. Edward Tregear, a scholar and thinker, had filled for many years the place of chief secretary for labor. It is not a cabinet office, but comes next thereto. He is a wise person and a sincere friend of the worker, as he has shown on many occasions. As soon as he heard that the ministry actually purposed to imprison the miners because they did not like the terms of their employment, he went to the minister of labor and earnestly protested, protested with tears in his eyes, as the minister himself subsequently testified, begged, argued, and pleaded. No possible good could come from such rigor, and almost certainly it would precipitate grave disaster. "To all this the minister was obdurate. Then Mr. Tregear said that he would resign; he would not retain his office and see men imprisoned for exercising their inalienable right of choice, whether they would or would not work under given conditions. "Now Mr. Tregear was one of the most popular men in New Zealand, and his resignation under such conditions would raise a storm that no ministry would care to face. Hence the government was in a worse situation than ever. On one side it fronted a dangerous venture with the certainty of a tremendous handicap in the resignation of the chief secretary, and on the other hand was an acknowledgment that the arbitration law was a failure and could be violated with impunity. "In this emergency decision was halted for a few hours while the government people consulted. Meantime, by quick and desperate efforts, the strike was ended, and the men went back to work. "This left the fines unpaid. The labor department solved that difficulty and allowed the defeated government to make its escape from a hopeless situation by paying the miners' fines.