President Harding announced on Monday that he himself would deal
with the strike in the railway workshops, inasmuch as the Railway Labour Board had failed to end it. The President, it is said, will bring pressure to bear on the com- panies, whose refusal to promise that the strikers shall be reinstated in their former positions appears to be the main obstacle to a settlement. Mr. Harding also made known his intention of using his statutory powers to ration coal and to control the railway goods traffics so as to give preference to coal consignments. The miners' strike, which shows no sign of ending, is beginning to excite uneasiness, as the stocks are now running low, and the transport of coal from the non- unionist coalfields has been interrupted by the railwaymen's strike. Just as the American :coal industry benefited by the British miners' strike last year, so to-day the South Wales coal trade has been cheered by large American orders for coal. But the imports of British coal will -not relieve the situation -in. America to any great extent.
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