This day week, simultaneously with the publication of the groans
of our weekly contemporaries and ourselves over the apparently widened breach between the masters and the men at Newcastle, carne the news that the strike was over and the quarrel made up. After the failure of the formal negotiation., two informal negotiators, unauthorized by either masters or men, met together and agreed on terms which were accepted with little demur by both parties. These terms involve a formal concession of the men's demands from the 1st January, 1872, when the nine hours' day is to begin, the masters gaining the delay. Besides this, the men engage to work overtime whenever the masters think it necessary ; but the wages for the nine hours' day will be as high as they were for the ten hours. The agreement is to be valid for a year, but to be determinable at the end of six months by a month's notice from either party, if either wish to determine it. It has been said that the leaving of the ' overtime' in the dis- cretion of the masters gives a great victory to the latter. But the men have, through their leader, Mr. Burnett, always expressed their wish to save the masters from serious trade difficulties by working overtime when it is really necessary to execute important contracts, and the extra price which has to be paid for overtime will always bo a real check ou needless and arbitrary demands for it. The masters have yielded everything, after the next ten weeks, which they said it was impossible for them to yield. Evidently the appreciation ou which we ventured last week, of the utter unreality of Sir W. G. Arm- strong's economic demonstration, was, if not actually a bull's-eye, within the white.
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