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Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 6094, 10 March 1891, Page 2

Tiif! strike of four thousand miners emploj'ed in the Marquis of .Londonderry's Durham coalmines will make a serious difference in the output. These men have struck as an expression of sympathy with tha six hundred families of the n>en employed at the Silkworth colliery, and who were recently evicted from their cottages. The Silkworih colliery is near Seabatn, in Durham. It will be quite in keeping with the times if this strike extends over the whole of the Durham coalfield. The Marquis of Londonderry is not the man, however, to be turned a hair's breadth by the strike from the path he has marked out for himself, as tho following will show :— " Somo years since the Marquis of Londonderry, who is tho lurgest mine owner in what is known us the Durham coalfield, had a dispute with the London wholesale coal merchants as to tho price he was receiving for his coal delivered ' in the Pool,' as tho portion of the Thames below London Bridge, where the colliers unload, is called. He wui, then receiving 14s or 15s per ton of 21 cwt, while the merchants were charging from 24s to 26s por ton of 20cwt. The merchants endeavored to convince the Marquis that the difference was swallowed up by the cost of unloading, cartnge, &c, and the coal dues, now abolished, but then Is Id per ton. The Marquis, however, was not satisfied, and as no arrangement could be arrived at he determined to sell no more cargoes at the Coal Exchange, and purchased a wharf in Millbank-street, close to tho Houses of Parliament, from whence bo afterwards removed to Nine Elms-lane. Carts and waggons, bearing the words ' Marquis of Londonderry, coal depot, Seaham Coal Wharf, Niue Ekns-lane, S.W., (W. E. Fielding, manager),' are now to bo seen all over London. These coals are probably the bost that come into tho market."