Jan. 20.
Tr is all but impossible to make out from the telegrams exactly what was at issue in the latest railway crisis." There is much about sliding scales, prewar averages and the like, without any clear indication of what they would mean to the individual. The main impression conveyed is that some of the men wanted to fight the fight of last autumn all over again, that a majority of them were for a time quite unreasonable, but were somehow cajoled at the eleventh hour into reasonableness. There is a suspicion that the Govern ment's firm demeanour had not a little to do with this happy result. We have complained more than once in the past year or two of the imperfect and often one-sided account of Labour questions given by Reuter. In actual fact, however, Reuter is probably less to blame than the newspapers on which it necessarily depends for its information. A curious example of how imperfect a report may be of a Labour dispute, even when great care has been taken over it, has just come under the present writer's observation, in the matter of a strike of Army and Navy Stores employees. There are certain facts which have a not unimportant bearing on the dispute, of which, however, the report we have seen, though obviously written with great pains to learn both sides of the dispute, makes mention. What, then, may—not happen in jourals less careful, and in respect, not of 2 small strike affecting comparatively few people, but of a national upheaval like the railway fight?
Questions of this nature are forced upon one by a very arrest ing article, signed "A" Skilled Labourer," in the Fortnightly," which reviews the railway and protests against the deliberate misrepresentation of the men's case, of which the writer alleges that most of the Press of Great Britain was guilty. To take the question of Wages: most people were under the impression that the men were asking for large additions. What they really wanted to know was how much of the war bonus that had been tacked on to their admittedly low pre-war pay was' going to be cut off. And the writer says that whereas the Government stated that there had never been any intention of reducing pay until December, reductions had actually begun in September, platelayers having been cut down' from six to fourteen shillings a week. As regards the lightning nature of the strike he writes The very papers which were loud in their outcry about the wicked suddenness of the strike published headlines on Wednesday, September 2t, concerning the Threatened Strike" and other such lines on September 25 stating that the strike was postponed. After this when the "lightning strike" was actually upon us the Government boasted of its complete preparedness." It had been threatening for six months, it was definitely threatened, it was postponed, it came into being, the Government was fully prepared—yet the strikers were very wicked in taking such a step without due notice having been given!
Another misrepresentation taken up by the writer was concerned with the alleged cutting of signal wires by strikers. If this really were done by railwaymen, he points out, they would know, none better, that the worst that could happen—_ would be delay of trafic; for if a wire be cut or broken, the signal automatically stands at danger. No paper, he avers, was frank enough to publish this correction when it was pointed out; and he quotes other instances of misrepresentation in which, he says, the men's letters of correct tion were equally disregarded. Tu point of fact the men behaved throughout extraordinarily well. Of the subsequent police court charges, only one genuine rail-Wayman was convicted. The rest were of the hooligan class.
The truth in all such disputes lies probably somewhere midway between Tabour's contentions and those of what Labour calls "the capitalist Press." We should certainly hesitate to believe that the best of the British papers were deliberately guilty of misrepresentation. But it would not be surprising if their natural leanings—the outcome of class, training and an acute sense of discomfort when public services are interrupted—cansed them insensibly to take sides against the strikers, and to dwell more on the points in their disfavour than to their advantage. We are free to confess that we ourselves may have misjudged the railway strike in particular and the Labour movement in general, partly in
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.