n, and
an order went forth from the representatives of the latter body to the
effect that no one belonging to any of its branches should handle the
goods of the obdurate company. This was all very well in its way,
until the order touched the railway hands, who are in the employ of the
government. The union appealed to the railway commissioners to remain
"neutral" and not to carry the goods of the offending firm. The
commissioners responded that they were the servants of the public; that
it was not part of their business to recognise the quarrel, but that
it was their business to carry for any and every citizen who did not
infringe their rules. The representatives of the union renewed their
appeal for "neutrality." Why should these domineering commissioners take
the side of capital and fight in its interests? The commissioners again
wrote that they were the public carriers, that they had no right to
refuse to work for any law-abiding citizen, that they had no place or
part in the quarrel, and intended simply and merely to do the duty for
which they were appointed. The din which arose on this final declaration
was at once melancholy and comic.

Here was the government lending all its power to crush the working man.
Here was the old class tyranny which had created class hatreds in the
old country! This was what we were coming to after having emancipated
ourselves from the trammels of a dead or effete superstition! Here was
a government so crassly wicked and purposely blind as to profess
neutrality and yet refuse to fight our battles! What had we--the working
men of New Zealand--asked for? We asked that the government should hold
our enemy while we punched him; and while they traitorously proclaimed
their neutrality, they refused this simple request for fair play.
Therefore are we, the working men of New Zealand, naturally incensed,
and at the next election we will shake these worthless people out of
office, and we will elect men like Fish, who know what neutrality really
means!

The Hon. Mr Fish was one of the labourers' faithful. The palpable
interference of the Commissioners wounded him profoundly.

The more recent strike of the Queensland shearers has afforded
opportunity for a display of an equal faculty of logic and
reasonableness. The shearers, at loggerheads with the squatters,
proposed to arrange their differences by arson. They threatened openly
to fire the grass upon those vast northern plains where fire is th