STRIKES IN THE UNITED KINGDOM AND AMERICA.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 416, 2 November 1889, Page 6

STRIKES IN THE UNITED KINGDOM AND AMERICA.

Comments were freely passed during 1 the recent London Dock strike upon the fact that while Britain's colonies and dependencies contributed freely and largely to the fund necessitated jto ( >s,upply food $o .the strikers, and \Vithoutu.\\shich contributions , the result could not have been attended" with success, yet the great Rcpub'ic of America contented itself with sending bald expressions of sympathy and nothing more. On the face of it this seemed strange. The great Republic is popularly supposed to be the paradise of working men, where of all nations of the world they are supposed to be best able to hold their own and exact satisfactory conditions of wages and hours of labour from their employers. . \ In perusing? late American papers, the very reverse of this would appear to be the case. There are at the present time several large strikes taking place in different parts of America, and it would seem that the strikers, who in many instances are as miserably poor as the London dock labourers, are being left almost unassisted to fight their weary battle with their employers. The strike of the coal-miners at the Braidwood mines, about 100 miles from Chicago, which by last advices had then continued four months, is a case* in point. Upwards of 15,000 miners were then out of employment and reduced to absolute starvation. The accounts given in the papers are most harrowing ; bufc the most'dnaccountable thing to Englishmen is, that theheartrending appeal of the starving thousands appears to be met only with sympathy, and not with the necessary sinews of, strikes as well as wars. The immediate cause of this strike was the reduction made in the miners' wages: Ten years ago the miners were paid about six" shillings a ton' for getting out the coal ;* this ha 3 been gradually reduced, until now they are only paid at the rate of three shillings, which the miners declare is ab-

solutely not sufficient to enable them to live and support their families. A special reporter of the "New York World" was sent to the spot, and points out how that after the strike had commenced, their little stock of food and hoarded dollars soon vanished. Then an appeal, in the name of right and justice, was sent out — first zo their more fortunate fellow townsmen, next to their working fellow miners in the north-west, and Jastly to the outside world, in the all - powerful name of charity and the common brotherhood of man. "But,"he significantlyadds, "practical sympathy was slowly aroused, and the appeal then changed to the cry of weakening nature, l send us food, or our wives and children will starve to death.' Even this was met without response, and the appeal was changed to ' for the love of God send us something to eat, we are dying of starvation." There, have been scores of deaths since the commencement of the strike, very many women having succumbed in childbed, being absolutely without* proper nourishment. The treatment of these miners by their employers, according to the result of painstaking inquiries made, appears to have been abject slavery. They were compelled under pain of dismissal to deal afc the employers' truck store. A commission 'had been appointed to inquire into the conditions under which these miners ha&'Taeen working, and it was hoped that they would insist; upon the abolition of the truck system. The Braidwood Company h|t upon an ingenious plan, by which they secured that all the wages paid by them should return to their store. They accomplished this by increasing the number of men at work in the mines, and then by a" carefully-devised plan divided the total amount of work among the men so that the entire wage fund would be ultimately expended in the store. The men seem determined to starve rather than give in to the old terms. On one of them being asked by the " World "' reporter " if he did not feel like giving in and going to work," he exclaimed " Never ; I will die tirst. It is slow starvation to work on such wages, and I would rather die in the free, pure air above ground than in the mine working in water and breathing bad air. White slavery has taken the place of black slavery. 1 was born a free" man and as a freeman I will die." lt-wa&, however, generally supposed that the men would, give in ; not on their own account, but on account of the sufferings of their women and children, and only permanent relief adequate to the great want could avert an ignominious and unconditional surrender.