COUNTING THE COST.

Northern Advocate, 8 December 1910, Page 3

COUNTING THE COST.

THE FRENCH RAILWAY STRIKE

J Brief as Avas the duration of the r j French railway strike, France has suf--1 I fered enormous losses through it. For 1 a bare week's confusion and riot the 5 j country has to foot a very big bill in- : j deed. Accurat? figures are. of course, " i impossible, but it is computed by the officials of the Ministry of Finance !, thfit ths cost oi the strike cannot be placed at less than tan to twelve mil- : lions sterling. The value of goods "hung up" durj ing- the strike between France and England alone was nearly a couple of million pounds. A very fair proportion of theso goods were foodstuffs and other perishable articles, the value of which is irretrievably lost. A similar state oi affairs, of course, existed in the interchange of goods between France and her Continental neighbors, Belgium, Holland, Germany and othor countries. The French railway lines themselves lost a million and a quarter in passenger fares and on goods freightage, and will be put to great expense I to repair the damage done by v the strikers, who themselves h?.ve lost quite £ 5C0,000 in wages. The effect of the interruption of the international trains hit manufacturing and retail men very severely. Paris j houses where stocks were low were unable to fulfil orders. All industries have lost tremendously. So in a smaller way the losses have filtered down until the smallest dealer has suffered. As an instance of how a strike can affect every class of a community, the women of the ilower kiosks on the I boulevards whoso takings average £1 a day, have, for want of ;jood flowers sold only 5s or Gs worth. The strikers, with their senseless attacks on property, have run up a bill amounting to hundreds of thousands, while the loss to the small farmers and small shopkeepers all over France is vast. It is possible to obtain some idea of how they have suffered from Ihe market reports in the "Bulletin dcs Halles" which are published daily. The foodstuffs received in the Faris markets alone ] were reduced by half during the days < of the strike. ] Even the fishing villages remote ) from Paris felt tht effects of the strike severely, their aggregate losses being '• estimated at over half a million pounds