5 OCTOBER 1912, Page 18

An instructive comedy was played last Saturday out- side Unity

House, the headquarters of. the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants. A number of ex-railway- men recently employed as casual clerks at Unity House have been picketing the House. Their services had been dispensed with, as they had demanded the minimum ,wpge of thirty-five shillings a week sanctioned by the National Union of Clerks. Last Saturday the pickets, stopped and questioned some applicants for the vacant posts, when thp officials of Unity House sallied forth and ordered one of the pickets away. A rough-and-tumble struggle ensued and the evidence fails us to tell who got the best of it in the "general mix-up," as it was called by an onlooker, when two officials and the picket were wrestling on the pavement: The defence of their action put forward by the officials of Unity House-; that their proprietary and personal rights were being inter! fered with—is a model of what any capitalistic employet might say in similar circumstances. Still, it is a little confusing to find the Executive of a trade union asking with such brutal clearness and emphasis,_" Why should we not do what we will with our own ?"