STRIKE INCIDENTS.

Press, Volume L, Issue 14909, 6 March 1914, Page 7

STRIKE INCIDENTS.

(from, otjk own correspondent.) SYDNEY, February 27. Day after day goes by, and in the papers in the morning the people, turning to the meat strike news, read, "Still no settlement." At the time of writing there are no indications of a settlement, though the "Premier is hopeful." Mr Holman is now back from New Zealand, and he is giving Mr Estell, Minister for Labour and Industry, a hand in tho matter. Mr Estell was "hopeful" before Mr Holman arrived, but thero was no settlement. Mr Holmau is hopeful, but there is no settlement. All the Ministers are hopeful, in fact, and Cabinet holds continuous meetings in an endeavour to arrive at a solution, but so far there is no settlement. Meanwhile a meat-starved city calls upon the Government to "do something." The Premier is curiously cautious. He won't make any statements. "We propose to take certain steps, but there is nothing to communicate, he says in his hopeful way. He Won't even see tho Press representatives: Perhaps he is afraid of saying something he might afterwards be sorry for; a Labour. Premier must be careful lest he say anything which may get him into trouble at the Trades Hall. The reporters could not find him at all on the day of his arrival from New Zealand. The next day they found him "in," but he would not see them. He sent word out that he would only answer questions which might be sent into him by his' messenger—written questions. No questions were put to him. The reporters ignored him in the same way that he ignored them, ..hat the "certain steps" are that may be taken is not yet clear, and the master butchers, the employees, and the public, are still waiting. Meanwhile, exciting scenes, sometimes approaching a riot, are to be witnessed outside the meat depots established by the master butchers, who are doing their own killing and carting and cutting up. Women go there armed with hatpins, and rude men, kicking against the pricks, jostle them this way and that. Yet tbe women seem, somehow, to edge their way to the front. An interested boy picked up no fewer than eleven hatpins after the crush was over at one of the depots a day or two ago. The strike in the iron trades may be a bigger thing in its way—there are 8500 men out of work at the present moment—but the public are more interested in the meat strike. The way to get at a man's heart, as we know, is through his stomach.