THE COAL STRIKE.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10574, 4 March 1912, Page 4

THE COAL STRIKE.

A two-thirds majority of. miners of Great Britain have decided by ballot in favour of a national stoppage to enforce the principle of a minimum wage for every man and boy working underground. The .strike commenced on Ist March, and now affects 1,000,000 workmen in and around mines and the whole of industry which is dependent upon coal. It i , perhaps, the gravest industrial trouble with which Britain has ever been faced. A general strike is the last, most costly, and most desperate device known to industrial warfare. It is to be undertaken only when everything else has failed. It resembles nothing so much as a proposal to sink the ship for the sake, say, of improving the dietary of the forecastle. The device of a general strike, if it succeeds, means empty pockets for everybody, (bankruptcy in every trade, misery in every household. The most helpless members of Society— little children, helpless women, the ,sick, tho very .poor—will feel the effects of the strike first of all, and worst of all. Tlie Government's realisation of tho seriousness of the situation finds expre sion in the cabled speech of the Prime Minister, delivered at the Miners' Conference, in which he emphasised the fact that the coal trade is the ■life-blood of industry. The Premier is endeavouring to arrange a conference of owners and workers, but

latest cabled advices state that the miners have refused the invitation. The longer a settlement remains in abeyance the graver will become the position. Both sides are firm in their resolve not to give way, and the Government cannot go beyond a certain point in its interference.