The Lancashire strike has ended in the complete victory of
the masters, the men returning to their work at the reduction of 10 per cent. The immediate causes of the surrender are stated by the Weavers' Committee to have been the exhaustion of the benefit societies, and the feeling created by the riots. They ascribe the violence committed to the dregs of society, but in a very manly and striking address to the workpeople declare that the masters, with their houses sacked and their property de- stroyed, could not be expected to become more reasonable. They allege that the maintenance of the people on strike would require £3,500 per week, and repeat that the cause of distress is over- production, which has been checked by the stoppage. They expect, if the purchasing power of the working-classes is not enhanced and raw cotton made cheaper, to see a crisis as severe as that produced by the American war. They believe that the masters will never again, after this lesson, ignore the just claims of the workmen.
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