Series 01 Part 02: Hughes family correspondence, 3 April 1917-22 September 1918 - Page 106
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[Page 106]
(2.)
You have no idea what a state things are in here. Nothing that I can remember approaches it in any way. There is an organised industrial revolution, practically throughout Australia, but with its centre in New South Wales. It is the inevitable result of the smashing of the Labour Party at the last Federal Elections, and at the N.S.W. Elections, and it represents a savage effort to smash the National Governments by paralysing all trade and industry. It began in a strike of the N.S.W. Railway Workshops against a system introduced recently to make the men enter on cards every day the work they have done. This is practically universal in all private firms, & has been in operation for a long time in some Government Departments, but the railway men thought they saw a chance to force the great strike we knew was coming, so out they came. All the engine drivers, guards, etc. on the railways joined them, & all the tramway men came out also, so for a short time there was a regular "hold up". However the Government, with George Fuller at its head (Holman being, by the grace of God, in England) determined to stand firm, & appealed for loyal workmen to help, promising them that if they did so, they would be kept on after the strike ended, & would not be thrown to