•2o8 HARVARD LAW REVIEW works of Sydney. The engineers struck work because the Railway Commissioner of New South Wales (the railways belong to the state) was introducing some card system for recording the time taken by each man in several operations. Then the other railway men, engine-drivers, stokers, etc., struck in sympathy, then the Sydney tramway men (government tramways), then the coal miners, then the waterside workers, the seamen, and so on. The strike of the waterside workers extended to the principal ports of Australia. The waterside workers were actually working under an award of the Court; yet it is surely significant that the alleged grievance from which this general strike started was not within the competence of this Court, could not be handled by this Court under the law: for two reasons, each sufficient in itself, (i) The dispute as to the card system was a dispute between a state "in- strumentality" and its employees; and according to a decision of the High Court given in pursuance of the American doctrine of McCulloch V. Maryland, etc., this Australian Court of Conciliation cannot touch a state "instrumentality";^^ (2) the dispute as to the card system was confined to one state. It is not even an offence under our act for men to strike on account of a dispute as to an industrial matter if the dispute be confined to one state.^° It ap- pears that the leaders of the railway men in Sydney asked the government to refer the dispute to the Arbitration Court of New South Wales, and that the government declined. I have not been able to ascertain the ground for the refusal, but at all events it is clear that our Australian Court could not deal with the root of the trouble. Nevertheless, the operations required by the country at the wharves had ceased, and it became the duty of the Court to do anything in its power to get the operations resumed. Therefore on the thirtieth of August, 191 7, the Court at the instance of some thirty employers struck out of the award a clause which embarrassed them in making use of outside labour. The Prime Minister, however, had been President of this union, and he evidently thought that something drastic should be done by way of punishment to the members. The public were alarmed and indignant at the wide- " Federated railway association, 4 Com. L. R. 488 (1906).
- " Coal and shale employees, 24 Com. L. R. 85 (1917).
