THE ENGINEERS' STRIKE.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XVIII, Issue 4362, 3 December 1897, Page 4

THE ENGINEERS' STRIKE.

*_______W»*»__ m __«__»________i_ii m mi m iimiT *___ London Daily Telegraph, in com-j menting on the disastrous engineering I

strike at Home,asks whether demagogues who tell the workmen that capitsl

has plenty of profits to spare and may J be indefinitely bled, are spenking the truth? Let our new idea artisan (it says) study attentively what Hr Yd ward J, Reed has written on this head. Speaking of the great Palmer Company, on the Tyne, he states, of hi*» certain knowledge, that it had been working for several yrars at no profitat all. 'Jhe workmen there employed have received during the period three millions sterling in wages, but the people whose money erected the buildings in which they worked, and furnished ihe vast establishrapnt throughout with the costly plant of which thp workmen made use in earning their millions, receive no return at. all for their outlay. "How is it possible,'' Sir Edward asks, "for firms so circumstanced to enter into conferences with a view to tin acceptance of further burdens and further losses ?" And if it be sadly frue, as some say, that nobody nowadays thinks of his employer, or his country, or his country's navy, or anything except his. own comfort and convenience, then we would still invite our leisured friends to meditate on these questions on the level ground of self, where Sir Edward puts it in saying : "It will be an evi!—aye, a disas-trous-—day for the workmen of this country when they find out, if they insist on finding out, that the ability, energy, and enterprise of British manufacturers have become lost to them, and that by an overweening and mistaken appraisement of their own claims they have deprived themselves of that employment which our great firm. have hitherto been the means of securing for them," If the British workman is to keep his place and bis personal advantages in the growing straggle for custom, will he do so by weakening those who find plant, capital and locality? Does it want shortened hours and neglected training, here to beat the foreigner, or will it not seem more likely, in studying all these points, that willing and resolute industry and better mechanical education are indispensable conditions if British manufactures are to survive ?