Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1891-05-24
FORCING THE FIGHT.
Master Builders Take a Turn and
Lock Their Strikers Out.
THE UNION MEN ARE CONFIDENT.
Both Sides Well Organized and q Long
Struggle Will Ensue.
HARRINGTON DROPS THE COMMISSION
tBY CABLE TO THE p1spAToHl

LONDON, May 23.-The partial strike In
the London building trade, which has lasted
nearly a fortnight, entered new phase to.
day, when all the leading employers Locked
their men out, with a view to impress the
union that they mean business. So far the
union has been able to keep away nom
unionists, owing partly to holidays and
partly to the liberal strike pay which is al
lowed to non-unionists as well as unionists,
the former receiving shillings and the lat
ter B shillings per day. The union is said
to have over e1OO, 600 in hand, and the main
object of the employers in resorting to a
lockout is, of course, to increase the de-
mands upon their fund, instead of allowing
two-thirds of the men to remain at work,
supporting by their levies the other third
engaged in forcing the outworks
The employers are nearly as well organ
lied as the men and have money at their
disposal. The position Of the master
tailors, who are engaged in big struggle
with their men, is not nearly SO favorable
as that of the builders. They are organized
to some extent, but scores of important
firms and hundreds of smaller ones do not
belong to the Employers Association and
many have yielded before the struggle has
we'll commenced.
They May Surrender.
The associated employers meet on Monday
to consider the crisis, and the probabilities
are that they will surrender on the best
terms they can get The strike was ar
ranged with heartless disregard of the
convenience of the West End tailors. They
are full of orders at this season of the year,
and fashionable youths are clamoring for
their summer outfits, strike or no strike.
London dudes are, in fact, in position
which entities them to the compassion of
their conferees and imitators in New York
and elsewhere. They have deferred the an
nual emergency to the butterfly stage, ow-
ing to the cold, rainy, backward spring and
the influenza, and now, when summer shows
signs of putting in its tardy appearance and
the epidemic has departed to other climes,
these tailors have taken the unheard-of lib
erty of quarreling about such paltry things
as rates of wages and hours of labor, as if
they existed for any other purpose than to
build pretty garments for their betters. The
horror of the situation is not lessened by
awful rumors, persistently circulated, that
some West End tailors are stealthily getting
their work done by East End Sweating
firms"
Harrington Wants to Resign.
Lord Harrington feels so keenly the
death of his only brother, Lord Edward
Cavendish, that it is not improbable he
will insist upon resigning the Craftsmanship
of the Royal Commission on Labor, in
which event the Government would make a
great effort to induce Joseph Chamberlain
to accept the post. The procedure of the
commission was published this week.
It recommends that the commission shall sit
in sections, so far as receiving evidence is
concerned, and in full session when consid-
ering the evidence. But objection is taken
to this plan, as calculated to restrict the
scope of the inquiry. TIE ground to be
covered by the commissions inquiries, if
certain recommendations be adopted,
is very wide, and will take couple of years
to explore properly, so that there is no
reasonable doubt that it will be Liberal
Government which will have to put the
commissions recommendations into legisla-
tive form, which is pretty much what most
people have assumed from the first.