In short, New Zealand has taken out of the hands of organised labour its principal weapon and has placed that weapon in the hand of the state. The right of waging industrial war is, now, in New Zealand denied to unions either of workers or of employers. To have enforced this denial without loss to either side and at the same time to have encouraged organisation is a feat that any British minister may reasonably desire to emulate. It is quite certain that, without the Arbitration Act, New Zealand would not have enjoyed that immunity from labour battles which in fact it has enjoyed. The use of the Act happened to coincide, as its author points out, with a revival of trade; and a revival of trade is, as every experienced trade unionist knows, the period in which strikes may hope to be successful. “Instead, however, of striking on a rising market, as the traditional custom of trade unionism has been, the New Zealand unions were able to arbitrate upon it”—to the saving of much money, much suffering and much ill feeling. Other objectors complain that the Arbitration Act does nothing to help the unorganised—always the most helpless—workers. Those who make this complaint have failed to appreciate the value of that important provision according to which a group of as few as seven (originally as few as five) workers in any industry are allowed to register themselves as an industrial union. Even in the poorest and most scattered of English trades it would be an easy matter to collect seven persons who, _if they knew themselves protected from dismissal_, would be willing to appeal for improved conditions to a Conciliation Board. So far from shutting out the unorganised, the Industrial Arbitration law opens to them a door by which they may share in all the advantages of organisation without waiting for a preliminary improvement in their conditions; and, at the same time that it holds out to them a powerful helping hand, makes them not merely passive recipients of a benefit, but active agents in their own emancipation.