wn occupied chiefly by the miners and their families, most of the
houses being the property of the mining company, and the men continued to
occupy the houses while the strike was in progress. Other miners were
found who were ready to take their places, but the men in possession
refused to move out, and threatened with violence any miners that should
attempt to work the mine. The men who had been prepared to work, finding
this to be the position, withdrew. As there was no actual violence shown,
there seemed to be a difficulty in the way of any interference by the
Government: so several months passed, during which the mine lay idle while
the miners on strike continued to occupy the houses and pay the very
moderate rents demanded from employees of the company. This they were able
to do partly from their savings, partly from the sympathetic contributions
from Australia, and partly by some of the miners having scattered over the
country and got work on the farms, and throwing their earnings into the
common fund.

After repeated appeals by the mine-owners to the Government, an
arrangement was made that the Company should employ miners willing to
become members of a new Union registered under the Arbitration statute,
and that the Government should send a police force sufficient to protect
these in working the mine, and also to enforce the judgment of the local
court in dispossessing the occupants of the houses belonging to the
Company. An attempt was made by the strikers to defy this police force and
prevent the new Union from working the mine; but when most of the new
unionists had been sworn in as special constables, and a number of the
militant strikers had been arrested, the others saw that they could not
continue the struggle, and within a week or two abandoned the district,
giving place to the members of the arbitration Union in both the mine and
town.

Thus the first strike organized by the "Federation of Labor" in New
Zealand resulted in a failure, but the miners thus defeated and driven
from the little town that had been their home, in many cases for a good
many years, were naturally embittered by their failure, and became an
element of mischief in other districts, and especially in the coal mines,
to which they turned when they found it hard to obtain employment in any
of the gold mines.

The Australian Federation of Labor and its branch in New Zealand fully
appreciated the fact that their first attempt to establis