The Cotton Dispute The attempt to restore collective bargaining in
the Lancashire cotton industry is still continuing, but the associated employers and the federated workpeople differ widely in regard to the wages reductions which both sides feel to be necessary. Their negotiations are gravely hampered by the weavers' strike ordered by the Burnley unions and now spreading to other districts. With 25,000 Burnley weavers on strike, a demand for a strike of all the Lancashire operatives was pressed, but rejected on Wednesday. When the employers, their patience exhausted by long and fruitless dealings with the federated unions, gave notice to end all collective agreements, they exposed the industry to these local strikes, which were common enough in the days before the Brooklands agreement of 1898, but have been relatively infrequent since then. Order has quickly given place to chaos, but to reverse the process may be a slow and difficult task. And all the while unemployment and short time in the great cotton industry are worse than they have been for many a year.
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