Most of the references have been anything but trivial affairs, either as to the numbers of workmen concerned, or the value of the industries, or importance of the points in dispute.  It is wrong to suppose that the operation of the Act is confined to industries protected by high customs duties, or to workers in factories.  It may be applied wherever workers are members of legally constituted bodies, set up either under the Trade Union Act, or under the Arbitration Statute itself.  Unions who want to make use of it, register under it; and some eighty have already done so.  Trade Unions who do not specially register may nevertheless be brought before the Arbitration Court by the employers of their members.  So far the Act has met with a remarkable measure of success.  The Trade Unions are enthusiastic believers in it,—­rather too enthusiastic, indeed, for they have shown a tendency to make too frequent a use of it.  Some of their officials, too, would do well to be more brief and businesslike in the conduct of cases.  On the other hand, employers in most of the localities have made a serious mistake in refusing to elect representatives for the local Conciliation Boards, and thus forcing the Government to nominate members.  This has weakened the Boards, has hindered them from having the conciliatory character they ought to have, and has led in part to the frequent appeals to the Central Court of which the employers themselves complain.  The lawyers claim to have discovered that the penalty clauses of the Act are badly drafted, and some of them assert that unless these are amended, they will be able to drive a coach and six through the statute.  No doubt technical amendments will be required from time to time.  What is still more requisite is an understanding between the more reasonable leaders on both sides of industry, by which arrangements may be made for the more effectual and informal use of the Conciliation Boards.  Meanwhile it savours of the absurd to talk and write—­as certain fault-finders have done—­as though every arbitration under the Act were a disturbance of industry as ruinous as a prolonged strike.  Other critics have not stickled to assert that it has mischievously affected the volume of the Colony’s industries, a statement which is simply untrue.  It is the reviving prosperity of the Colony during the last three years which has led the Trade Unions to make so much use of the Act.  In place of striking on a rising market, as they do in other countries, they have gone to arbitration.  Public opinion in New Zealand has never been one-sided on the question.  It has all along been prepared to give this important experiment a fair trial, and is quite ready to have incidental difficulties cured by reasonable amendment.