EXCITING SCENES IN ADELAIDE.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1002, 17 December 1910, Page 5

EXCITING SCENES IN ADELAIDE.

STRIKE AND FOOD SHORTAGE.

INACTION OF LABOUR MINISTRY CONDEMNED. BUSINESS DISLOCATED. By Telegraph—Press Associalion-Copyriclit. Adelaide, December 16. Thero is great excitement in the city in connection with .the general strike of drivers arid transport workers. The intimation that tho conference between tho men and the employers had failed caused a tremendous rush for provisions. Eager . crowds were waiting long before tho shops were open. By 10 o'clock fleur was selling at lOd. a pound, and other goods were proportionately high. Many of the hotels are out of beer, owing to inability to cart it from the broweries. About two hundred brewery employees are idle. Six hundred buildings are. in course of erection in and about the city. If work is:.stopped through exhausting the supply of materials, over four thousand men will be thrown out of work. Wealthy men are carting homo tho necessaries of life in motor-cars. Many exciting sccnes have occurred in the streets, which the police are apparently powerless to prevent. If an attempt is made to drive a cart, tho strikers seize and relea-se the horses. Tho employers are indignant at the Labour Government declining to take action. The Premier (Mr. J. Verran) states that ho is doing what he can to preserve law and order, but the Government cannot act in a case in which it has no official cognisance.. At tho conference the employers offered the eight shillings a day demanded, but declined to reduce the Tho men say the hours are the moro important question. An attempt will bo niado to take a secrct ballot of the men.

THE POSITION UNCHANGED. FRESH TERMS REJECTED. (Rec. December 17, 1.5 a.m.) Adelaide, December 16. There is little change in the strike position. The strikers' have rejected tho masters' latest proposals for a settlement.