The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER SATURDAY, MARCH 9, 1912. THE STRIKE.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXII, Issue 63, 9 March 1912, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER SATURDAY, MARCH 9, 1912. THE STRIKE.

great strike of British. collier.' has the nation in its grip. Ever} coal pit in England and Wales is idle, and all efforts to avert the disaster have failed. lit is undoubtedly thi greatest upheaval of labour and tin most widespread disturbance of Indus try the world has yet seen, and pos sibly the strangest feature of it al is the calmness with which tlie who! proceedings -are being carried .out Neither press nor people have becom hysterical, and for the most part tin strikers and their allies and sympathisers have behaved quietly ant within their legal rights. But thi; cannot last, and as the tension grow; and want pinches more keenly we ma; look for other things. As lit is, late: cable messages tell of the wreckin' and burning of buildings at a Scot tisa colliery, where a few non-union ists were employed. The economii difficulty to be faced is a very grea one. The miners demand their schc dale of pay and hours of labour, am nothing but that schedule. Som< owners, it n'-s agreed, could pay the in creased wages and still work then mines at a profit, but many again, i is well known, could not possibly dt so. It is still hoped that the monk representatives may listen to rcaso; and that the great trouble may one •before its full force is felt by the nation. And what is the real and underlying cause? Mr Harold Bcgbio. in January last, visited the Wekl mining districts and after doing s' wrote to the “Daily Chronicle” : “ do not know how bettor to exprec: this ferment at work in the storm centre of the mining world than to sa\ that it is the soul of the- miner moving unwillingly from his ancient religiousness to a new and not ye: wholly realised materialism which half frightens and half attracts his troubled and divided mind.” Proceeding, Mi Bcgbie attempts to analyse the minor’s mind, and consider the thought? ot a minor who goes by train or elec trie tram to Cardiff to witness a football match. He reminds us that tin Welsh minor of to-day has not onh received all the advantages of a wonderfully efficient educational system, but he is by nature a thinking man, a reading man, a reflective and a:i imaginative man. He sees splendid and beautiful Cardiff, lie observes the prosperous and sometimes swaggering people in its flourishing streets, and he asks himself how this groat change has been brought about, ho asks himself where the money has come from

to pay for all this flue architecture, all these rich carriages and motor-cars, all the happiness and prosperity ot these happy, well-dressed people. And ho knows better than any Socialist can tell him that but for steam-coal, but for the mine in the valley from which he has just come, Cardiff would be still a small and sleepy town, little grander than his own village on the mountain-side., Ho begins to wonder whether ho fs getting quite a fair share of the plundered earth—he who takes his life in his hand every time he goes down in the cage, who toils in a muck-sweat for long hours underground, who returns to his crowded, tiny, and bathless cottage in a state so black and grimy that his wife can hardly welcome him. Ho wonders how it is that these fine people in Cardiff, who never descend into the mine, who live happily, safely, and cheerfully in the open air, can make so much more money out of Welsh coal than he, the skilled workman, who cuts and rips it from the bowels of the earth. He thinks that there is something wrong. Now, while a vast number of hard-working and thoughtful men feel that there is something fundamentally and pervasively wrong in the social, order, civilisation is in peril. The miners may be utterly irrational in the present dispute; the masters’ case, from an arbitrator’s pmm of view, may be unanswerable, nevertheless, if a million brave and skilled workmen brood over something which' they feel is shameful and unfair, if endless conferences and conciliation meetings fail to remove this dim. indefinite and deep-buried sense of wrong, trouble must be the end of tilings, peace is impossible. And this is the present condition of the Welsh mining world. Wages have been raised, conditions improved, hours shortened, and yet the sense of something wrong in life abides like the haunting of an unforgettable sorrow. What is that something wrong? Yesterday a fine settler of this district who in his youth worked in the Welsh coal pits, said to ns; “I am not sure of tho position. Are the men right or ire they not. I know my countrymen, ind I feel that there is something wrong.”

THE SOUTH POLE.

Cook and Peary and their antics over the alleged discovery of the North Polo caused quite a. little ' ferment some time ago, and the discussion as to who got there first went on until everybody got very tired. That history repeats itself is well-known, hut that Scott and Amundson should emu- . late' the deeds and doings of Cook and : iV ■* "I i ' . f ■ Peary ; is most sin’cerely to he not de■urteld.' i These polar picnics probably piavb; ’thpir, '.uses, .and iljeyj, certainly keepj.jj. ifew hardly and adventurous spirits employed congenially, but there is far too much fuss made about the whole business. Captain Amundsen .is- now reported to have reached the South Pole, and to have taken three days continuous observation there. This is probably correct, hut the point - now. arises, did Captain Scott reached the Pole, as also reported, and if ■so • who was' first there Pi • 1