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Show Hj STRIKES, BAYONETS AND WOOL GOODS. B ( Wo have industriously looked into tho cause of the mill work- B . 'ers' strike in Lawrence to learn why they went out in the middle of a bitter winter and made themselves cushions for the sdldiers' bayonets, Says the Los Angeles Tribune. Allowing for exaggeration on both sides, certain 'facts seem ;cleah The Massachusetts legislature legisla-ture cut down the weekly hours of some classes of operatives from fifty-six to fifty-four; the- mill owners, objecting t5 the law, cut down wages pro rata; the 25,000 operatives determined to fight for the advantage given them in the law. The workers, whose average weekly wage is said to have been about $S, insist that they need all they got to live decently. The manufacturers say business will not warrant tho cut in working time about twenty minutes each day at the old pay. There may be truth in both contentions. But the dispassionate onlooker finds it hard to sec how anybody can live on $7 a week as au American citizen ought to be entitled to live, let alone rear a family on it It is difficult, too, to overlook the fact that the Lawrence mills are owned by tho woolen trust which recently has been officially rcported to have profited for years by an "indefensibly" high tariff. Thus fortified it encouraged an influx of cheap foreign labor. Woolen goods in the past decado have gone up in price to tho retailer from 30 to 100 per cent. If the makers can't afford concessions con-cessions to their $S employes, who is getting that increase that's taken from the consumer an enormous sum in the aggregate? |