STRIKE "WILL LAY TRAWLERS UP.

Press, Volume LXVIII, Issue 14290, 28 February 1912, Page 10

STRIKE "WILL LAY TRAWLERS UP.

RAILWAY COMPANIES COMBINING. (Received February 28th, 12.30 a.m.) LONDON, February 27. Mr Enoch Edwards presides at a conference of 160 delegates, representing 610,000 miners, at Westminster Palace Hotel, to-day. Sir G. Doughty, speaking r.t Grimsby, declared that if thero was a strike 1500 fishing boats would be rendered idle, and 260,000 men..reduced to th© verge of destitution. "The Times" publishes an article describing tho. Australian methods of settlement of strikes, particularly in New South Wales. The "Daily News" states that the miners cannot be coerced, but the owners can; therefore, they miut grant the minimum wage. If they lesist, a Coercive Bill will be introduced, and passed in the House of Commons in 24 hours. The' House of Lords will accept it as a matter of course. In the event of a strike the com« panics have decided that the English railways will be treated as one system. Tho passenger services will be reduced to a minimum, and goods trains used to carry foodstuffs, and run .at tho rate of fifteen miles an hour. They will economise in coal, and make sweeping reductions in staffs. The executive of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Workers has warned members not to precipitate a sympathetic striko -without the executive's instructions.