MUSHROOM STRIKE.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 129, 27 November 1909, Page 10

MUSHROOM STRIKE.

The latest strike with -which Paria is threatened (wrote the correspondent to the Daily Telegraph in September) will come as a painful surprise to the cooks and restaurateurs, who may havo to strike every "sauce a champignons" out of their bills of fare until it is over. The mushrodVn men — that is to say, the hands employed by the mushroom growers in Paris — have formed a syndicate, whose first step is to discuss the advisability of a strike. As they seem to be unanimous about their grievances, the calamity looks verj imminent. Paris is a great centre of mushroom culture, as tourists know who are shown the old catacombs and underground galleries where these fungi are produced in large quantities. All the old diggings and deserted quarries at Ivry, Carrieres-sur-Seine, Mery, and other places are given over to this industry, and the men employed in it are numbered by the thousand. The French chefs can hardly get along without their daily supply of champignons, which are used in one form or another for nearly every appetising menu. One can imagine the dismay of the cooks at the mere threat of being deprived of a regular supply. The mushroom gardeners, however, havo their grievances, which they imagine can only bo remedied by a strike. They are kept at work from twelve to fifteen hours a day in damp, unhealthy, underground gulleries like rabbit burrows, and have to go about mostly in a stooping, doubledup position, so much so thnfc many of thorn lose the habit of walking erect for the rest of their lives. Added 1o this hards-hip is the mengrcness of their Y>ay, which they want raised from fifty or .sixty centimes to a minimum of seventy centimes per hour, and n limit of ten hours' work per day. all extra work to be paid for at the rate of \i per hour.