Cotton Matters have come to a head in the dispute
which threatens to throw the spinning section of the Lancashire cotton industry out of gear. At a joint conference on Tuesday, at Manchester, the representatives of the operatives rejected finally the suggestion of the employers that they should accept a reduction of 12.82 per cent. in their wages to meet the consequences of the nine years' depression. Memories are anything but short in Lanca- shire, and we suspect that the trade unions have not forgotten the wild investments and unsound enterprise which accompanied the boom immediately after the War. At the same time the Master Spinners must be given credit for their yeoman efforts of late to reduce costs in every branch of management and marketing, and they have a right to expect co-operation from the operatives. Here again the problem is international rather than national. Unfortunately the employers' carefully prepared statement seemed to ignore this altogether, and their horizon is apparently still bounded by the idea of underselling "the foreigner." We hope that the Government Inquiry will cover the wider field which has already been diligently tilled by the I.L.O.
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