e year ending
March 31, 1909, sixteen workers' unions, and a like number of employers'
unions, had their registration cancelled for neglect, while two other
unions formally cancelled their registration." This meant practically
that these unions have withdrawn from the field of the act and expressed
their disapproval of compulsory arbitration, even in its recently
modified form. Not only have the unions been withdrawing, but, freed
from its bondage, they began at once to win their most important
strikes, indicating what its effect had been. Even the employees of the
State have been striking, and successfully.

"The workers' position is embarrassing. The original act was passed for
their benefit as well as to prevent strikes, but when it could no longer
be used as a machine for raising wages, they were the first to rebel
against it." There can be no doubt that our authors are correct, and
that the working people are beginning to feel they have been trapped. In
both New Zealand and Australia they have given their approval to an act
which in actual practice may become more dangerous than any weapon that
has ever been forged against them. The only possible way they could gain
any advantage from it would be if they were able to elect the judge of
the Arbitration Court, but, to obtain a political majority for this
purpose, they would have to develop a broad social program which would
appeal to at least a part of the agriculturists as well as to the
working people, but here we turn to the considerations to be brought out
in the next chapter.

Mr. Charles Edward Russell, as the result of two visits to Australasia,
has very ably summed up the Socialist view of compulsory arbitration in
_The Coming Nation_, of which he is joint editor. Mr. Russell says:--

"The thing is a failure, greatly to the surprise of many capable
observers, and yet just such a result might have been expected from
the beginning, and for two perfectly obvious reasons, both of
which, strange to say, were universally overlooked.

"In the first place, the court was nominally composed of three
persons, and really of one. That one was the judge appointed by the
government.

"The representative of the employers voted every time for the
employers; the representative of the unions voted every time for
the unions; the judge alone decided, and might as well have
constituted the whole court.

"At first