disputes are apt to be neither stubborn nor mischievous enough to call for State interference; moreover, how could an award be enforced against a handful of roving workmen, a mere nebulous cluster of units?  At the request of any party to an industrial dispute the District Board can call all other parties before it, and can hear, examine, and recommend.  It is armed with complete powers for taking evidence and compelling attendance.  Its award, however, is not enforceable at law, but is merely in the nature of friendly advice.  Should all or any of the parties refuse to accept it, an appeal lies to the Central Court of Arbitration, composed of a judge of the Supreme Court sitting with two assessors representing capital and labour respectively.  The trio are appointed for three years, and in default of crime or insanity can only be removed by statute.  Their court may not be appealed from, and their procedure is not fettered by precedent.  No disputant may employ counsel unless all agree to do so.  The decisions of this Court are binding in law, and may be enforced by pains and penalties.  The arbitration law has been in active operation for about three years, during which time some thirty-five Labour disputes have been successfully settled.  As a rule, the decisions of the Local Conciliation Boards are not accepted.  Either some of the parties refuse to concur, or some of the recommendations are objected to by all those on one side or the other.  In nearly all cases the awards of the Arbitration Court have been quietly submitted to.  In three minor cases proceedings have been taken for penalties.  Twice these have been dismissed on technical grounds.  In the third instance a small penalty was imposed.  All the important Labour disputes of the last three years have been brought before the tribunals set up under the Act.  The only strike which has occurred and has attracted any attention during this period was by certain unorganized bricklayers working for the government.  As the Act applied to neither side an attempt was made to settle the dispute by voluntary arbitration.  Some of the men, however, refused to accept the arbitrators’ award, and lost their work.  But of strikes by Trades Unions there have been none, and there should be none so long as the Act can be made to work.

As to the kind of questions arbitrated upon, they comprise most of the hard nuts familiar to students of the Labour problem.  Among them are hours of labour, holidays, the amount of day wages, the price to be paid for piece-work, the proportion of apprentices to skilled artizans, the facilities to be allowed to Trade Union officials for interviews with members, the refusal of Unionists to work with non-Union men, and the pressure exerted by employees to induce workmen to join private benefit societies.  A New Zealand employer, it may be mentioned, cannot take himself outside the Act of discharging his Union hands, or even by gradually ceasing to engage Union men, and then pleading that he has none left in his employ.  A Union, whose members are at variance with certain employers in a trade, may bring all the local employees engaged in that trade into court, so that the same award may be binding on the whole trade in the district.