The Scotch railway strike shows no sign of coming to
an end. The Companies have secured enough men to keep the passenger-trains going after a fashion, and to deal with a certain amount of the goods traffic; but the lines are not being worked with anything like efficiency. Meantime, the men stick to their demands with the " dourness" characteristic of Seotchmen. The Caledonian Company on Monday evicted
some of their former employes from houses at Motherwell belonging to the railway, but not without provoking a serious riot. The town. was filled with sympathetic miners, who did everything they could to obstruct the Sheriff; and the assistance of a body of Hussars, as well as of a large detachment of police, had to be relied on by the authorities. The Riot Act was read, and there was a great deal of stone-throwing, the police, the soldiers, the Company's signal-boxes, and passing trains being indiscriminately pelted. It is only fair to say, however, that the outrages were, as far as is known, not committed by the strikers, but by the roughs who side with them in the dispute. .Still, the outbreak of lawlessness has helped to prejudice the -men's case, nor are their prospects likely to be improved by Mr. John Burns, who is careering through Scotland en- -deavouring to stir up sympathetic strikes in other trades. Such action has always failed in America, and it will fail quite as signally in England. On Thursday, negotiations which at first seemed promising were entered into, but ultimately the Directors and the mon were unable to agree, and as we go to press a settlement seems further off than ever. It must be
• remembered, however, that a strike almost always ends suddenly, and through some unexpected compromise.
Previous page
