A QUEER STRIKE,

Wanganui Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 7498, 22 August 1891, Page 4

A QUEER STRIKE,

Employees Demand Lower Wages. SCBANTON (PA.) July 9. The employees of the Green Ridge Iron Works, in this city, of which A. L. Spencer is owner, have gone out on strike under novel circumstances. The men recently joined the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers, anj during a brief suspension for repairs arranged a scale o£ prices in accordance with those demanded by the other Association workers throughout the country. When the scalo was presented to Mr Spencer he was astonished to see that it was 10 per cent, lower than ho had been paying, and surprised the men by theeigerness he manifested in agreeing to their terms. The men were to have gone to work yesterday, but someone among them in the meanwhile bad discovered the blunder they had made, and a committee was appointed to nek Mr Spencer to allow the old ecale of wages. Ho refused to do so, and, as the men have refused to return to work, it has placed them in the position of refusing to abide by an agreement whioh they originated themselves.

A woman named Lena Nelson was brought up at the R.M. Court thw morning on two charges. On the first (for drunkennets) she was fined Bi or 24, liouM, acd on the second (for the larceny of a table cloth from an hotel) she was remanded for three d»ys.

An old lady has just died at Spa, leaving 100,000 francs as a prize to astronomers who within ten years shall be able to communicate with any planet or star. M. Flsmmsrion is not without hope. He coneiders, notwithstanding that Mars is 42,000,000 miles from the earth, that tho j time may come when we can exchange greetings. He thinkt that certain lights which have Been on the Burface of Mars may possibly be signals to us from that planet. Mr Fodor, whose brush has finished bo many capital pictures of animal life, has just completed a very striking and life-like portrait of Mr E, McElwnin's handsome Norfolk trotter Quicksilver, which is now on view in the window of Mr Donald Ross' shop in the Avenue. Quicksilver is, without doubt, a eplendid specimen of the Norfolk trotter, and we are not surprised to hear that his list last season was a full one and his success so great that his owner has received nearly as many applications for this season as are required to fill the Hat for it. A little piece of "professional" tree-falling in Church Place this morning did not eventuate exactly accordingly to calculations, for after a well-known " member of the force " had taken all preliminaries, such as guying with ropes, etc., the word was given to " let her go, Gallagher," but the strain proved too great, the rope broke, and the refractory poplar swaying about, instead of gracefully reclining as intended in the roadway, toppled over on to the centre of an adjoining house, balancing itself fairly, and luokily without doing any further damage than breaking the ridge-pole. Of course there was a tremendous noise from the descending trunk, and the occupants of that house, probably under the impression that it was high time to leave, branched off from the scene as quickly as possible, without trying to probe to the root of the matter, but just stopping for a moment to fire a stray shot at the " limb of the law," by asking if that were a specimen of " first chop " tree-falling. Never in the history of English cricket hove so many runs been made in a match as in that between Sussex and Cambridge University, which terminated at Brighton on June 20th, During the three days over which the fixture extended, the aggregate number of runs obtained w»s 1402, which is a record for englieh crioket, the previous best being — curious to relate — in tbe match between the same teams last year, when 1339 were scored. The absolute best is 1411, made in a contmt between New South Wales and Victoria at Sydney in February, 1882. It is a remarkable circumstance in connection with the match under notice that over 300 were scored in each of the four innings, and only seven runs divided three of the totals, whilst on both sides a batsman failed to scoro on one occasion only.