WELSH MINING DISPUTE.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1141, 31 May 1911, Page 7

WELSH MINING DISPUTE.

e GENERAL STRIKE ADVOCATED. By Teleerapn—Press Association—Copyrieht London, May 29. The South Wales miners' delegates have resolved to ask the National Conference of Miners' Federations of Great Britain to declare a national stoppage of work on the minimum wage question or to allow a general stoppage in Wales. STORY OF THE DISPUTE. It may be recalled that the original dispute in the Rhondda Valley concerned tho price for cutting coal in tho Bute seam of the Ely pit of tho Naval Collieries, a constituent company of the Cambrian Combine. The 80 men orlmnally affected held that the seam gave "abnormal" conditions, and that at the price offered a living wage was impossible. The dispute led to a lock-out o£ the Naval Colliery employees, and in September all the Cambrian Combine miners came out in sympathy. All attempts at a settlement have failed, and according to a London correspondent: "The Rhondda Valley seems to have settled down to the strike for the summer. Since the ballot there have been no negotiations of any kind between the two parties, tho disturbances have ceased, and the pits are no longer working at all. With April at hand there is now less pressure on tho men than there was a month ago. Then there was jjreat distress—and. indeed, there is distress still, but it is now reaching the condition of being tolerable. The Federation cannot throw the men overboard, and it has funds to carry tho strike at least some way further. The men have refused,' witii nn absoluto decision, tho terms that were offered, and the combine does not seem to bo ready wjth any better offer. What is there now to do? _ It looks like one of those long, despairing struegks to which there can be only one end, ushered in at last by hunger and cold."