SHIP-BUILDING AND TRAGEDY.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9134, 6 July 1908, Page 4

SHIP-BUILDING AND TRAGEDY.

"The lock-out at the federated shipyards has begun in earnest, and no one can say how long it is likely to continue,"- writes the London "Times" of May sth. "The deadlock i« deeply deplored in every branch of commerce, for the loss that is resulting on every .hand is enormous. There has been a belief among the workmen all along that the employers, when faced by the extremity would give way, and it is thought that the disposition of all operatives may change now that the unbending determination of the employers to snforce the reduction is realised." The "Evening Standard" remarks:—"A reduction of eighteen-

pence a week is not a ' very serious matter for men who are earning fifty shillings a week.yet.it is on this account that the 6,000 shipwrights on the Wear, the Tyne, and the Tees have been out on strike for neatly three months. And it is not as if this paltry reduction had been attempted by a grasping federation of employers out of sheer greed. The only .vender to the outside world is that the reduction attempted was not a good d'sal larger. It is no exaggeration to say that never in this generation have times foeen so bad in the ship-buildirg trade."