THE WHARF CRISIS OF 1919.
THE industrial records of Australia contain no more pregnant illustration of the power of organised labor than is to be found in the history of the Fremantle Wharf Crisis of 1919. Hitherto, in the long struggle for the proper recognition of the rights of the working classes the force of arms had not been openly employed; but what occurred on that tragic Sunday morning of May 4, and both prior, and subsequent, to that day, has shown to the Governments of this country that even armed force is impotent when employed to protect the privileges of the few against the common interests of the body politic. The victory of the Lumpers’ Union was complete, although in the achievement thereof one life was sacrificed on the altar of industrial freedom.
GENESIS OF THE TROUBLE.
The genesis of the 1919 crisis is to be found in the wharf trouble of 1917. On August 13, 1918 the Empire was engaged in a life and death struggle, a cargo of flour was to be lifted at Fremantle by the Singapore liner Minderoo and destined for a Dutch settlement. The Fremantle lumpers had been advised that flour so consigned was finding its way into Germany, and refused to load the ship. For this action they were declared disloyalists and pro-Germans, and accused of starving the boys in the trenches. History has disproved the first infamous calumny; the second needed no refutation. Amongst those boys in the trenches whom they were accused of starving were scores of their own comrades, the sons of many lumpers, and husbands and brothers of lumpers’ wives. Even were that proud fact not sufficient to silence the slanderers of a body of men whose record of patriotic service provides its own imperishable testimony of patriotism, the offer of the President of the Lumpers’ Union might have been accepted as a complete denial. For on August 24 Mr. William Renton offered, through the Press, on behalf of the lumpers to load any ship, free of all charge or wages, with foodstuffs for the boys in France. His offer was not accepted, and for the purpose of the employers the cry of anti-patriotism was continued.
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