We are pretty well hardened by now to the incessant
demands of one trade, after another _for higher 'and still, higher wages, but some _little surprise may be expressed at the request of the --National Union of Railwaymen for another pound a week all round. The very generous :settlement . made . with them in January is scarcely completed in all its details, and the National- Wages Board, vzhichda to adjust-their wages- according to any change in the coat of living, has not held its first meeting. _Mr. Thomas and his colleagues apparently ignore the fact that the railways, even with the higher freight rates, will entail a less of over twenty millions this year. Their demand, if granted, .would double that loss at the very moment when it is urgently neeesaary -to abolish all subsidies, •which are the most ruinous form of expenditure. A separate demand front the rival Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers was settled by the Central Wages Board on Tuesday. Drivers -and Firemen are to receive three -shillings a -week more from April 1st, andmenin other gradessehilling a week. Mr. Thomas's Executive seems to have been actuated -partly by a _desire to outdo the rival 'Society, and partly by a feeling that, if the docker deserved sixteen shillings a dap, any railwayman deserved at least as much. There is -of course no comparison between the regular employment on the -railways . and the hard and casual labour/ at the docks.
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