Senator La Follette and other progressives also champion this right against President Taft, and will doubtless win their fight, but, as I shall show later a right to organize does not mean a right to strike--and there seems no probability that any government will fail to answer the effort to strike on any very large scale either by punishment for conspiracy against the State or by excluding the strikers permanently from government employment.
They will doubtless be offered, as in France, instead of the right to strike, the right to submit their grievances as a body, if they wish it, to some government board (see Part III, Chapter VI).
The Australasian labor leaders were the first and are still the chief advocates of compulsory arbitration among the unionists, and if they find it used against them they have nobody but themselves to blame.

That Labor is disappointed in the result in those countries is shown by the fact that of late years, both in Australia and New Zealand, the most important strikes have been settled outside of the compulsory arbitration acts, and Mr.Clark states that he is unaware of any important exception.
But that the workers in Australia still hope to use this legislation for their purposes is shown by the referendum of 1911, by which they sought to nationalize the State laws on the subject.

At the time of the railroad strike in Victoria, Australia, in 1903, a law was passed which imposed a penalty of "twelve months' imprisonment or a fine of one hundred pounds" for engaging in a strike on government railways, and made a man liable to arrest without warrant or bail "for advising a strike orally or by publication, or for attending any meetings of more than six persons for the purpose of encouraging strikers." Even then the limit had not been reached.

In 1909 the Parliament of New South Wales passed an act especially directed against strikes in any industry which produced "the necessary commodities of life [these being defined as coal, gas, water, and food] the privation of which may tend to endanger human life or cause serious bodily injury," and the penalty of twelve months' imprisonment of the Victorian law was extended to all this vast group of industries also.

The law of New South Wales was most stringent, providing that any one taking part in a strike meeting under these circumstances is also liable to twelve months' imprisonment, and that the police may break into the headquarters of any union and seize any documents "which they reasonably suspect to relate to any walk-out or strike." Under this law the well-known labor leader, Peter Bowling, was sentenced to one year of imprisonment.
The unions violently denounced this enactment, but chiefly as they had denounced previous legislation, on the ground that it permitted _unorganized_ workmen to apply for relief under the law.