The New York herald., 1878-10-28
Extensive strikes In Scotland.


Our special cable dispatches from Glas-
gov will attract general attention. The
threatened strikes have come. The failure
of the Glasgow bank, which was a great
calamity in itself, crushing calamity to
the mercantile firms which went down with
it, an appalling calamity to the victimized
shareholders who have ruin and beggary
staring them in the face in consequence of
their unlimited liability for the enormous
debts Of the broken bank, is likely to prove
almost as calamitous to all the great
branches of Scotch industry. The i'm
portant shipbuilding industries, the i'm
portant coal and iron industries, with the
vast associated industries which gave en-
ployment to hosts of machinists. boiler
makers. millwrights. pattern makers, en-
gineers and other skilled laborers, have
tumbled into arrangement, mutiny and con-
fusion. These establishments had long been
staggering under burdens which they could
not stand under when they were struck
with the sudden disaster which has for the
last three weeks occupied the attention OF
the financial and commercial world. The
protracted stagnation of business which
for several years has borne SO heavily
on British trade had already weakened
this debilitated condition a shock which
could easily have been withstood in pros
porous times has o shattering and damag-
ing effect. 1t compels all the great indus
trial establishments to haul in their sails
and curtail expenses in desperate attempt
to save themselves from utter wreck. But
the laborcrs resist every attempt to reduce
their wages, and have now madly plunged
into an extensive and concerted system of
strikes. So far as we can judge at this
distance no movement of this kind was
ever SO mistimed and suicidal. Low
prices, contracted markets and the high rates
of interest consequent on the recent blow
to confidence render it impossible for the
establishments to 60 on without retrench-
ment of expenses, and the prospect is that
the strikers, after exhausting the funds of
their societies, will find themselves in O
condition of utter helplessness and distress
Bad as the immediate situation is the out
look lOr Inc IuCuFe IS even more gloomy auu
depressing. The prosperity of Great
Britain, which has been so brilliant and
wonderful, seems to have eliminated sew
eral years ago and to be now on a
declivity which slopes toward extinc
ton. There was never nation
whose prosperity was SO artificial as
that of Great Britain. It was not self
subsistent it rested entirely on her COM
mand of foreign markets. Rivals are grow
ing up which threaten to take these mar
kets from her. and the loss Of her markets
will bring inevitable financial ruin. In a
desperate effort to retain them by mere
cheapness her products have deteriorated
in quality, and the perpetual strikes of her
laborers are more and more crippling her
ability to undersell the rivals who. are
crowding her in tho markets of which she
used to have a monopoly. Her decline will,
Of course, be long and o slow process, but
she is already on the descent toward the
condition in which she will find herself in
the early part of the next, if not before the
close of the present century.