On Monday night the Triple Alliance issued an inflammatory manifesto
declaring that " unless an offer is made to the miners which their colleagues in the Triple Alliance can feel justified in recommending them to accept, a stoppage of railwaymen and transport workers will begin." The manifesto suggested that the minimum wages offered by the coal-owners would be less than a " living wage "—though the miners could of course earn far more if they cared to work a little harder. The Government were said to be " active if secret " partisans of the employers in an attempt to reduce wages all round. They had " adopted the new and odious expedient of forming a volunteer force as an instrument to be used against organized Labour," and were thus " provoking bloodshed and civil war." Cet animal est michant ; quand on attaque, i1 ee defend. The Government representing the vast majority of the people, it is to be inferred, must not try to preserve order and prevent the destruction of property if certain trade union leaders think fit to set the law at defiance. We observe with some surprise that Mr. Gosling, who is thought to be a moderate man, signed this violent and misleading document. Mr. Thomas in signing it merely acted in accordance with his usual practice of running with the moderate hare and hunting with the extremist hounds.
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