The Lancashire cotton-spinners struck last Saturday for a larger increase
of wages than the employers would concede. The em- ployers offered a rise of 40 per cent, on standard rates ; the spinners asked for 40 per cent, on their current wages, which would mean about 15 per cent. more. The employers offered to submit the dispute to arbitration, but the spinners refused. A hundred thousand persons left their work, and many more will be affected in other branches of the trade, at the very time when it might be expected to enter on a new era of prosparity. Sir Albert Stanley, President of the Board of Trade, suggested on Saturday last that the employers were misled by a temporary decline of prices, and that the cotton operatives had gained less during the war than the workers in any other large industry. But Sir Albert Stanley was speaking as the Coalition candidate in Ashton-on-Lyne, and his advice, in the circumstances, could hardly be disinterested.
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