the most active members, they gradually persuaded others to leave with them.  There was nothing either in the law or custom of the ports to prevent unionists and non-unionists working together on the wharves or the coasting vessels; so within a comparatively short time the members of the new Federation Unions were more numerous than those that clung to the older ones.  When this became the case, the officials of the new Unions approached the shipping companies with proposals for an agreement between them and the Federation Unions in some respects more favorable to the employers than the arbitration award under which the older Unions were working, and in this way gained a position which enabled them to undermine the old Unions, till they either died out for want of members or withdrew their registration, and at the end of their six months’ notice merged their Unions in those of The Federation.  The Federation’s plans had been so carefully prepared that there was little or no suspicion on the part of the employers or of the public generally as to the true meaning of the movement.  It was evident, of course, that it indicated a revolt against the arbitration law, but as the new unions appeared ready to give the employers rather better terms than the old ones, many reasons were found by employers for defending what began to be called the “Free Unions.”  In this way things had gone on at the shipping ports for about two years from the failure of the gold miners’ strike at Waihi, before anything happened to open the eyes of the public to the real meaning of what The Federation of Labor had been doing.  In that time the new Unions at each of the principal ports of the country had quietly obtained the entire control of the hands at waterside and local shipping, as well as of the Carters Unions.  The time had arrived when the syndicalists believed themselves able to compel the public to submit to any demands they might see fit to make.

The occasion finally arose, as might have been expected, at Wellington, where the Federation of Labor had established its head-quarters.  There was no definite dispute between the employers and workers, but for a few weeks there had been an uneasy feeling in relation to the Waterside Workers who, it was said, were growing more lazy and slovenly in handling cargo on the wharves and piers.  A meeting had been called by The Federation to discuss some grievances of the coal miners at Westport, from which most of the coal landed in Wellington is brought.  The meeting was called for the noon dinner hour, and a number of the waterside workers engaged in discharging cargo from a steamer about to sail, at once went to the meeting, and did not return to work in the afternoon.  The shipping company at once engaged other men to finish their work, and when the men came back some hours later, they found their places filled up.  The new men belonged to the same Union, but the men dispossessed demanded that the new ones should be dismissed at