11 JUNE 1904, Page 2

The one great danger of the United States, which is

called there "the madness of Labour," was strongly illustrated by an incident which occurred in Colorado on June 6th. The miners of Colorado have kept up an intermittent strike, marked by many of the incidents of civil war, for the last three years, and on the day named they committed a crime almost without a parallel. They laid a quantity of dynamite under the platform of the railway station at a place called Independence, and while a number of non-Union men were taking their places in the train, blew it up. Twenty men were instantly shattered to pieces, and the station destroyed. The public became excited, the Governor called out the Militia, and in subsequent rioting in the town of Dunnville, near Victor, the Militiamen were fired on, and seven or eight soldiers and rioters killed. It is believed that the State will in the end be occupied by national troops, the possibility of local con- trol having ended. The miners, it is said, have one serious grievance. A Referendum was taken upon the question of fixing the working day by law at eight hours, and it was carried by a majority of forty thousand. The Legislature, however, having, as the miners suspect, been bribed, refused the necessary ratification, and the hours of labour are still decided by the capitalists, who are now offering the Union men the alternatives of quitting the district and being hanged. There is, in fact, something like anarchy in Colorado, which depends for its prosperity upon the mines, and which has attracted great crowds of foreign labourers of Socialist opinions.