Serious labour riots have taken place in the neighbourhood of
Paris during the past week. On Thursday a demonstra- tion was made by Parisian workmen in the building trade, who declared a strike of twenty-four hours in order to visit en masse their comrades engaged in a labour dispute at Draveil, near Villeneuve Saint Georges. Some four thousand ouvriers went by train to Villeneuve Saint Georges, and marched through the streets singing the " Carmagnole " and the "Internationale," and before long the strikers and their Parisian friends came into conflict with a body of mounted troops, part of two cavalry divisions which had been detailed to assist the local gendarmes in maintaining order. The first conflict was not very serious, though the strikers seem to have used revolvers freely, but at five o'clock in the afternoon the mob erected barricades with paving-stones torn from the highway, with beams taken from half-finished houses, and with furniture, carts, and carriages. The barri- cades were, in fact, made in the old and approved fashion. Details of the struggle have not yet reached us, but the troops appear to have fired volleys in answer to the attacks made upon them with stones and revolvers, and three strikers are said to have been killed, while the number of seriously injured on both sides is large. We have little doubt that order will be maintained and the rioters sternly dealt with, for M. Clemenceau is one of those Radicals who realise that the maintenance of order is the first interest of the democracy.
