GAS REDUCED.

Press, Volume LXII, Issue 18725, 23 June 1926, Page 18

GAS REDUCED.

CONSERVING COAL SUPPLIES. (/TB.OU OSS OWS CO3BESEOKDEKT.) SYDNEY, June 17. There are always three parties to a 6trike. The third party, of course, is . the public, but it is only when a strike is brought home to it in practical form that it leauses the part it really plays. It awakened to tne tact, for instance, when a tew days ago <. homes, representing at a conservative \ estimate half a million residents of | the city and suburbs, had the usage of household gas forcibly and dramatically reduced by half in order that the available coal, the supply of which has been very appreciably limited by the engine-drivers and firemen's strike, may be conserved as long as possible. An ordinarily phlegmatic public realised how vitally it can be affected by a strike when it was faced with the peremptory demand of the Coal Emergency Board to forward to it, under the pain of a severe penalty, its gasmeter readings. The spectacle of householders storming the offices of the board, and of the Gas Company with its meter readings, or with all sorts of humble excuses for disobeying the order, was almost pathetic. The big northern side of the harbour, which has so far escaped the edict of the board because of the more fortunate position of the company which serves it, is at present _ enjoying the discomfort of the bigger section of Sydney, but its turn will come if. the strike lasts much longer. Sydney has been figuratively gassed because a comparatively few men refuse to work under what is known as the Hibble award. Tt has been shocked into a consciousness of the fact that even.if it has nothing whatever to do with a quarrel, it may very easily be harmfully affected by it.