NEWS OF THE WEEK.
AS we write on Friday the menace of the coal strike remains unrelieved. All that can be said with certainty is that negotiations are still going on and that a certain number of those who are in a position to know the facts are still hopeful that a strike will not take place. Events move so quickly in the crisis, and the details of the demands of the men and of the owners in regard to a settlement are so complicated, that it is of little avail to enter into particulars. Still, we may say generally that what is keeping the men and masters apart, or apparently keeping them apart, is the demand for a fixed minimum wage in all cases for every one who works under- ground—a fixed minimum so high that the operation of such an arrangement would in fact, though not in name, put an end to piecework in the mines. We mean by this that the difference in the miners' demands between what a miner must get in any case and what he can get by exerting himself industriously and energetically would be so small that he would have little inducement to win the coal out of which in the last resort his wages and all the other charges of the mine must be paid.
