STRIKE ENDED.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVI, Issue 138, 10 December 1908, Page 7

STRIKE ENDED.

(Received December 10, 10 a.m.) PERTH, This Day. The House Committee gave an assurance that adequate accommodation would be provided, and the journalists' strike is ended. In August last, the leaders of the West Australian and the Morning Herald staffs had an interview with the House Committee at Parliament House and explained to members their objections to the two rooms to which the committee desired to relegate reporters. The main objection is the great distance of these apartments' from the gallery entrance. The committee enquired whether it would be possible to fit up these rooms and make them convenient, but the leaders of the staffs pointed out that this was not possible. Eeporters did not object to even the most meagrely and cheaply furnished rooms, so long as their position enabled £hem to carry out their duties. It was also pointed out to the committee that one of these rooms was altogether impossible, being unhealthily constructed of cardboard lining and ceiling, with iron walls and roof; in fact, iifctlo better than a dungeon. The pressmen absolutely refused to enter it on any conditions. The reporters further stated that, with this place left out of _ _ account, there was only one writing-up room available if the commit-tee-s decision was to stand. In this room on certain days it would be necessary for 15 or 16 pressmen, representing the two rival morning dailies, to sit and perform their work. Mr. Briggs (chairman ot the committee) was so little conversant with the requirements and customs of modern journalism, that ho calmly asked whether the proprietors of the two morning papers did not provide olnce accommodation for their reporters. He was informed that, of course, they provided it in their own establishments, but that it was customary in all Parliaments, except that of Western Australia, for ample provision to be made for the accommodation of pressmen within the precincts of Parliament itself. Mr. Briggs was apparently under the impression that the reporters, after taking notes in the galleries, hurried to their city offices to make the transcript. The Speaker (Mr. Quinlan) indicated that his sympathies were with the pressmen. He, however, was evidently in a minority, for shortly after the Legislative Assembly met that afternoon the leaders of the staffs were informed verbally by the usher that the committee had decided not to grant the pressmen better facilities. The communication of this decision of the committee was for some reason delayed for about a quarter of an hour after the meeting of the House. It was anxiously awaited by about a dozen reporters, who refused to enter the gallery' until' the decision of the committee was made known. On th« contents being disclosed, the reporters wore insti-ueted by the leaders of the stftffe to leave the precincts of the House forthwith.