STRIKES AND "CREEPS."

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9032, 20 January 1908, Page 4

STRIKES AND "CREEPS."

What with incessant labour strikes above the surface of. the soil and occasional "creeps" on and beneath the surface, the position of the people of Newcastle is truly unenviable. The coal and other strikes which have been almost of monthly occurrence during the past year or more have done incalculable injury to the men as well as colliery owners and to the trade of Australasia, and now Mother Earth appears to have gone on strike, and promises to finish tha work of destruction of the district which the efforts of man have started. The "creep" which is reported in the cables from Newcastle, published to-day, is the third serious j subsidence in that locality during little more than a year and a-half. In May, 1906, Shepherd's" Hill, a thickly-populated residential area, was the scene of a "creep" which did a great amount of damage to residences. In October last year another disturbance of the earth was reported. It was preceded by crunching and crackling noises, which alarmed the people, and finally great cracks opened in several streets. Houses were shaken from foundation to roof, and many ceilings fell. The area affected was between forty and fifty acres in extent. Many of the finest residences in the city were seriously damaged, while the floor of the Anglican Cathedral was cracked from the eastern door to the baptistry. Other churches were also more or less damaged. The present creep has set in on the hill upon which the Anglican Cathedral stands, and has practically completed the ruin of that edifice which the October subsidence began. This hill is where the previous creep ended. It has embraced another large area of the city, which is said to be densely populated, and the general damage done is enormous. Fortunately no life has so far been lost. The residents of Newcastle will have the sympathy of every one in the Australasian States in their misfortune, and all will hope that no further Fiibsider.ee may occur. It is to be hoped also that in view of this disaster the strikers who are engaged in blocking the shipping trade, will agreeto a truce and aliow the business of the doubly embarrassed port of Newcastle to proceed ai uninterruptedly as possible, for a while at least.