. It was announced on Saturday last that, after seven
months, the boilermakers' lock-out had ended. The Boilermakers' Society decided after a ballot to accept the settlement which was agreed upon at a recent confer- ence in Edinburgh, and they returned to work on Monday. The dispute, of course, was fundamentally not one between the boilermakers and the employers, but between the Federation of Engineering and Shipbuilding Trades and the boilermakers. The employers and the men's Federation had come to an agreement, but the boiler- makers, who were members of the Federation, refused to abide by it, and stood out for preferential treatment. Naturally the employers could not grant this without unfairness to members of the other Unions. It has taken seven months, incalculable loss in money and terrible privation to enforce the lesson that collective bargaining must be upheld by both sides, but it has been done at last, and we cannot but feel that an indispensable industrial principle has been strengthened, even though at a great cost. « •
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