e 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.

"To all intents and purposes it was the end of compulsory
arbitration in New Zealand. Not nominally, for nominally the thing
goes on as before; but actually. It is only by breaking our shins
upon a fact that most of us ever learn anything; and the exalted
ministry of New Zealand had broken its shins aplenty on a fact that
might have been discerned from the start.

"If you are to have compulsory arbitration, you must compel one
side as much as the other.

"But in the existing system of society, when you come to compelling
the workers to accept arbitration's awards, you are doing nothing
in the world except to compel them to work, and, however the thing
may be disguised, compulsory work is chattel slavery, against which
the civilized world revolts.

"This is the way the thing works out, and the only way it ever can
work out. There can be no such thing as compulsory arbitration
without this ultimate situation.

"If, therefore, any one in America believes in such a plan for the
settlement of labor troubles, I invite the attention of such a one
to this plain record.

"For my own part, years ago I was wont to blame the labor leaders
of America because they steadfastly rejected compulsory
arbitration, and I now perceive them to have been perfectly right.
The thing is impossible."[75]

A somewhat similar act to the Australasian ones, though less stringent,
has been introduced in Canada. The Canadian law, which is a compromise
between compulsory arbitration and compulsory investigation, applies to
mines, railways, and other public utilities. Strikes have been
prevented, but let us see what benefits the employees have received.
Whatever its effect on wages and hours, the law has the tendency to
weaken the unions, which hitherto have been the only reliable means