WORK AND WAGES

Evening Star, Issue 11858, 11 April 1903, Page 6

WORK AND WAGES

THE HOLLAND RAILWAYS,

25.000 IDLE MEN,

Prcsp Association— By Telegraph—Copyright.

AMSTERDAM. April 10. Ninety per rent, of tlie Dutch railway mpi are offering to re-urac . work; There are many signs indicative of a division amongst the strikers The response to the call for a general strike has been very race mplete. Twenty-five thousand men are idle in Holland, including the majority of the masons and one-third of the gasworkers. The Government railway authorities have rejected the employees’ request to negotiate on the basis of the reinstatement of those who have been suspended and dismissed. A sentinel at Rotterdam fired on four railway men who refused to leave the line, killing one-.

GREAT STRIKE IN ROME.

DAILY CONFLICTS,

ROME, April 10. Every form of labor in Rome, except Government employees, has struck’ to support the protracted printers’ strike against free labor. The soldiers are acting as bakers and butchers. Twenty thousand troops are quartered in the city. Thousands of visitors have left. Conflicts are taking place between the strikers and the police owing to the attempts of the former to hold meetings and to stop the trams, which the gendarmes eecort. Fcnr hundred arrests have been made. The shops and churches have been closed. At latest news the strike is reported to be gradually diminishing.

THE RUSSIAN WAY.

ST. PETERSBURG, April 9. A force of military, using artillery to quell a factory strikers’ riot at Nijni-Nov-gorod, killed 30 and wounded 100.

NEW ZEALAND’S LABOR LAWS,

MR MACGREGOR’S VIEWS,

MELBOURNE, April 9. At a meeting of the Executive Committee of the Victorian Employers’ Federation an important letter bearing on compulsory arbitration from Mr Carroll Wright, Commissioner of Labor, Washington (U.S.A.), was received- He says: “I have felt all along that we have not been presented with the two sides of the compulsory arbitration idea as it bolds in New Zealand. I have seen extracts from addresses and pamphlets taken from Mr John MacGregor’s views, but nothing so comprehensive as these papers by him. 1 have never had much faith in the method, and have believed that whatever success was secured in New Zealand was only temporary, and +bat an industrial depression—even a slight one, with falling prices—would practically upset the plan. I have been perfectly willing to be convinced that compulsory arbitration is entirely right, or largely so, but I have seen nothinig yet to convince me. We are thinking here in America of compulsory investigation as a means of securing the facts and causes of trouble promptly, and giving them to the public.”

LEGISLATION AND STRIKERS.

HEAVY PENALTIES

AMSTERDAM, April 10. (Received April 11, at 9.30 a.m.)

The Second Chamber of the Netherlands States-Qeneral has passed the railway measure by 81 votes to 6. The Chamber passed the clause imposing a penalty of nine months’ imprisonment and a fine of £l2 (sic) on persons found guilty of attempts to interfere with individual liberty. Another clause punishes as a misdemeanor strikes by railway workers. The whole Bill was agreed to by 81 to 14. The Chamber authorised the formation cf a military brigade of workers for the railways during and an inquiry into the position of private railways.

NEW YORK BUILDING TRADE

60,000 THREATEN TO STRIKE.

NEW YORK, April 10. (Received April 11, at 8.50 a.m.)

The Board of Building Trades, representing 60,000 workers in New York, threaten to strike unless an advance of from 10 to 20 per cent, is conceded throughout their various branches. The masters refuse the demands.