trike, invited the Unions that were not connected with them to declare
the strike at an end, and tried by confining the strike to their own
members, to maintain a solid front, which, with the help of the Australian
Federation both in money for the strikers and in refusing to handle any
goods either from or for New Zealand, they still hoped would carry them to
at least a compromise, if not to the victory they had expected. The hopes
of the Federation of Labor were not realized. Within a week or two a large
proportion of the members of their own Unions, seeing their places filled,
and their work being done, not by free labor, which they might hope to
deal with, but by new Unions, whose members would be entitled, under the
arbitration law, to preference and many other privileges, began to desert
and to seek admission to the Arbitration Unions that had taken their
place. For a time this was fiercely denied by the Federation officials,
but as the days went on, and business of every kind was resumed in the
cities, the groups of strikers at street corners and around the Federation
head-quarters dwindled away; the hotels were reopened, the shops and
stores were busy, the mills were at work, and even the coastal steamers
were manned and running, and the federationists were forced to admit that
they were hopelessly defeated. For a time they still hoped that the
Australian Boycott might save them from absolute disaster, and the Labor
Ministry of New South Wales tried to help the Federation by making an
appeal to the New Zealand Government to arrange an arbitration to settle
the dispute between The Wellington Waterside Workers and the merchants and
shipping companies. The absolute refusal of the New Zealand Government to
recognize The Federation of Labor, or to interfere with the new Unions
under the Arbitration Act that had taken their place, finally settled the
question, and completed the defeat of the strikers. The officials of the
Federation declared the strike at an end, and the Australian Federation
announced that the boycott was also at an end.

* * * * *

At first sight it may seem that, after all, the experiment in syndicalism
was on a small scale, and that its lesson can hardly be of great value to
a country like America. A little consideration may correct such a
misapprehension. New Zealand was deliberately selected by the Syndicalists
as a test case, for two reasons. In the first place it w