on lecturing tours through New Zealand, to create dissatisfaction with the Arbitration Courts by representing them as leaning to the side of the employers, and ignoring the claims of the workers.  When this had gone on for about a year, workers of various classes were induced to cross from Australia, and join the Unions in New Zealand, for the purpose of influencing their fellow unionists to disloyalty towards the system under which they were registered.  These men were generally competent workers and clever agitators, and many of them soon obtained prominence and official position in the Unions.  As was natural, a good many of these new-comers were miners—­either for coal or gold—­and many of them joined the miners’ union at the great gold mine known as the Waihi, from which upwards of thirty million dollars worth of gold had been dug, and which was still yielding between three and four million dollars a year.  There were nearly a thousand miners employed there, and all of them were members of a Union that was duly registered under the Arbitration statute.

There had been several questions in dispute between the miners and the owners, and these had been referred to the Arbitration Court some time before the arrival of the new Australian miners.  The result, while it favored the Union in some respects, favored the Company in others, and this fact was used by the new-comers to convince the older hands that the Court had been unfair, and that they could secure much better terms for themselves if they would cease work, and so inflict immense loss by permitting the lower levels of the mine to become flooded.  After a few months the Union decided to take advantage of the provision of the law which enabled any registered Union to withdraw its registration at six months’ notice.  When the time had expired, the Union repeated the demand which had been refused by the Court, and on the refusal of the Company to agree, a strike was at once declared, and the whole of the miners ceased work.  This had the effect, within a very short time, of rendering all the deeper levels of the mine unworkable.  Close to the mine was a prosperous little town occupied chiefly by the miners and their families, most of the houses being the property of the mining company, and the men continued to occupy the houses while the strike was in progress.  Other miners were found who were ready to take their places, but the men in possession refused to move out, and threatened with violence any miners that should attempt to work the mine.  The men who had been prepared to work, finding this to be the position, withdrew.  As there was no actual violence shown, there seemed to be a difficulty in the way of any interference by the Government:  so several months passed, during which the mine lay idle while the miners on strike continued to occupy the houses and pay the very moderate rents demanded from employees of the company.  This they were able to do partly from their savings, partly from the sympathetic contributions from Australia, and partly by some of the miners having scattered over the country and got work on the farms, and throwing their earnings into the common fund.