Industrially New Zealand is a comparatively peaceful land, but it is not true that it has no strikes or lockouts. However, such as it has had, since the passage of the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act and its numerous amendments, have been few, and usually of trivial consequence. Possibly the strike in New Zealand would have been more frequent if it were not, as it has been for several years, a legal offense. So, also, are lockouts. Against both employees and employers penalties for violations of the strike and lockout clauses of the Conciliation and Arbitration Act are heavy.
For nearly twenty years after the passage of this act, strikes were practically unknown in New Zealand; but recently the growing dissatisfaction of workers, particularly those allied with the New Zealand Federation of Labor,—a strong organization with principles akin to those of the Industrial Workers of the World,—has caused the strike shadow to lengthen alarmingly. The most serious strike New Zealand has had since 1890 occurred in 1912, among the gold miners of Waihi, and it lasted five months.
Perhaps nothing in this interesting land impresses the investigating visitor more than the continual disputes and adjustments between capital and labor and the numerous and frequent changes in the labor laws. What one truthfully writes of New Zealand's labor statutes this year may not be true of them next year. In this political experimental station, this social laboratory, legislative labor acts are constantly, some of them
