A struggle of great importance is going on in Suffolk
and Cambridgeshire, the centre being about Newmarket. The labourers there, who see gentlemen spending thousands a year on training-stables, asked that their wages might be raised from 13s. a week to 14s. The farmers refused, and on 10th March formed themselves into a strict Trades Union, in which "the majority are to decide and the minority to give way," a proceed- ing quite as proper as that of the labourers. This majority then decided that it would lock-out all Union men for being Unionists like themselves, and never employ them again, and this resolution was carried. From 1,500 to 2,000 men were dismissed, and as the farmers are the Guardians, and can legally force applicants for relief to accept any work at any wages they like, the labourers must live on their own funds and the very large subscriptions sent to help them. The men, of course, have no option but to submit or go elsewhere, and should adopt the second course early, and while they have still funds in hand to pay their way to the North. An immense quantity of irrelevant matter is introduced into the struggle, but as we try to show elsewhere, there is not the smallest occasion either for violence or abuse. If the farmers do not like to pay 14s. a week, which, no doubt, will soon be 16s., they have a right to shut up their factories. If the men think they can get more- by going elsewhere, they hav.e a riWit to go. As there are no men to replace these, thet farmers with be in a fix,—but that is a matter entirely for them to judge.
