THE ENGINEERS' STRIKE AT NEWCASTLE.

Westport Times, Volume V, Issue 890, 21 November 1871, Page 3

T H E ENGINEERS' STRIKE AT NEWCASTLE.

Sir W. Armstrong, on behalf of the associated employers, has addressed a letter to the " Times" wherein he says:—" The leading article which appeared in the "Times" of yesterday on the engineers' strike in the north of England exhibits so much misapprehension of the facts that we feel constrained to give you a true account of the history and present position of this deplorable struggle. In the first place, we beg leave to assure you that you havejbeen completely misinformed as to the result of the effort we have made to replace the men who have struck work. We are happy to say that our endeavours to supply our wants by the perfectly legitimate course of procuring labour, both English and foreign, from other places, have been highly successful, considering the short time which has elapsed since we adopted that line of action. We never for a moment supposed that we should bo able to hold to their contracts the whole of the men we might bring from a distance. All experience has proved that men on strike invariably succeed in sending back a proportion of those imported to supply their places, but the following figures will show that the proportion of loss sustained is even less than might reasonably have been expected:— Number of men who went out on strike, 6,595; new hands imported, 1,917 ; deduct number of desertions, 187 —1,730; add men returning to work after desertion, 11; total of new hands now at work 1,741; to this number is to be added old hands who have come back to work or who never left their employment, and new men engaged on the spot, 1,375 ; making total number engaged in our works 3,116, being nearly half the number employed at the time of the strike. Every day brings additions, and we only desire to be left alone in order to restore our shops to former activity. We were amazed to see ourselves described in your article as being in a condition of hopeless difficulty, and we really felt that, if the League themselves had possessed the power of inspiring that article, they could scarcely have used words more calculated to serve their purposes than those in which it is expressed. We had imagined that a determined effort to wrest concessions from employers by sheer force of combination was not a thing which found favour with the more educated and intelligent classes, whose opinions generally find expression in the columns of the ''Times." As your article has cast a doubt on the existence of the sympathy of these classes with our cause we feel it incumbent upon us to state the ground on which we so firmly resisted, and still intend to resist, the demand for the reduction of work to fifty-four hours per week. Had our men applied for an increase of wages instead of a reduction of time the dispute might easily have been adjusted. Wages fluctuate with demand, but shortened hours of work do not alter ; and, therefore, there is less objection to increase wages than to decrease time. Shortened time also involves loss of interest od capital, for when men cease to work machines stand idle, and the whole establishment becomes unproductive, thus damaging employers without benefiting the men. The hours of work which were general in our district at the time of the strike were fifty-nine per week. That number we have reduced to fifty-seven, which is the time worked on the Clyde. On the Continent, in places where equal advantages are possessed to those of the north of England in regard to coal, iron, and railway communication, the common hours of work are sixty-six per week, and the wages are less than in England. We refuse the demand for fiftyfour hours a week, because we feel that the district in which our factories are located would be laid under permanent and serious disadvantage in competing with other localities in the kingdom, or if the system were to extend to those other localities, then the whole country would be placed at a like serious disadvantage in its competition with foreign producers of machinery. The Nine Hours' League avowedly disregard such considerations as these.-They say that 'if trade should leave the district they must make up their minds to follow it, and many worse things may be imagined than an English colony in Belgium.' "