The inquiry into the Sheffield outrages has continued all the
week, and every day makes the fact more clear that the " Execu- tives " of the Unions in the steel trade and brickrnaking trade either wink at or sanction all manner of outrages, not always excluding murder ; that the managing Committees shut their eyes lest they should see facts patent to everybody else, and that the small oppressions, such as rattening, i.e., stealing tools as a pun- ishment, are universally prevalent. So complete is the terrorism that one master, Christopher Rotherham, was threatened with death for refusing to drive his men into the Union ; and another, Mr. Tysack, saw and filemaker, thought it wisest not to inform the police when shot at with a revolver. The masters, he says, in the trade were "completely cowed." Needles are put in the clay used by non-unionist brickmakers, to destroy their hands, and altogether Sheffield seems to be a place where the Sixth Command- ment is suspended for the benefit of operatives. Unless a sharp cure can be applied, we shall have to go back to devices eight hundred years old, and hold every Union responsible for its mem- bers, even if its complicity in an outrage is not distinctly proved. An obligation to maintain the families of all operatives wounded,
maimed, or slain, under circumstances suggestive of trade spite, would at least render the Unions more cautious. •
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