5 MAY 1928, Page 3

For the third time a joint-conference between the masters and

the operatives in the cotton industry has broken down. It had been hoped that the conference would be able to make some rearrangement about " clean- ing time " which would give a full forty-eight hours' Work a week without reduction of wages, but the em- ployers once more emphasized the need of a reduction. Failure was therefore inevitable. The gods seem to be depriving the employers of sense in order to destroy them, The operatives have been patient and not at all unaccom- modating. The reduction of wages is no solution at all. It simply is not practical politics to suggest a reduction so long as everybody knows that the cotton industry requires reconstitution—the proper business of the employers—from top to bottom.