TEXTILE TRADE STRIKE.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1387, 13 March 1912, Page 5

TEXTILE TRADE STRIKE.

4 OPERATIVES' WAGES INCREASED. Si Telerranh-Presß AnaoatatlM—C»»yrl*M (Kec. March 12, 10.15 p.m.) New York, March 12. In connection with the dispute at Lawrence, Massachusetts, it is announced that 150,000 cotton and woollen mill operatives throughout New England have secured an increase in their wages of live per cent. It is believed that this concession by the masters will allay the unrest which is pormcating the whole area. Strike conferences are being held. A LABOUR LAW THAT CAUSED A STRIKE. When several thousand workers strike against a law enacted "in the interest of and at the instance of labour," it looks to ono editor as if "the beneficiaries had recoiled from a boon." But though the grievance of the Lawrence strikers seems to he that the decrease in hours of work under the new Massachusetts fifty-four-hour law means a decrcaso in the wceklv pay, the cause of the trouble, savs the Washington "Post," is "lack of 'knowledge of the language of America." For the operatives in those woollen mills are of 45 different nationalities, and they use •15 different varieties of "picturesque vocabularies." Not understanding English, most of them were unable to "understand the mill-owners' explanations that a 56-hour wage could not be paid for a 54-hour week. All they knew was that when pay-day came around there was less inoney than they had been getting, and to them that was a much more serious matter than two extra hours of rest. Then came the strike, and rioting, and militia with fixed bayonets, and, as a Bay State paper remarks, the Massachusetts 54-hour law "seems to be beginning its career under military escort." The statement of President Wood, of the American Woollen Company, which may be taken as official, contains these words: "There has been no reduction in the rate of wages, but it cannot be expected that people who work 54 hours should take home the wages equivalent to 56 hours of work. 'When one considers that there are mills in tho country running from 5G In GO hours, selling their merchandise in the same market, one can see how impossible it is for Massachusetts manufacturers to compete against such odds or hope to secure orders or hold their own." Yet Mr. Wood is reminded by tlio Soriimfiold "Republican" and Pliiladelnhia "Record" that the cost of production is measured, not by hours of labour .alone, or by wages, but also by cost of plants and raw material and efficiency in management, which nrfl no less important And the Springfield "Union," while ndmittini the manufacturers' contention that "the continuance of tho old ware | scale under shorter time is equivalent to an increase of wages," does not find ic "clear on the face of things that the employees are not entitled to such increase.'