Coal Deadlock

"Here, in the prosperous bounteous United States, I feel like a maggot in a great big piece of cheese." Thus Miss E. ("Wee Ellen") Wilkinson, shingled, petite, British Laborite M. P., broached an appeal for U. S. contributions to the British coal miners strike fund last week at a feminist foregathering in Manhattan presided over by Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt. "Wee Ellen," green of hat, green-gowned, dangling jauntily a green purse continued: "Nearly a million miners are locked out,"* (TIME, May 10 et seq.)

"With their wives and families they form nearly one-tenth of the total British population. This is their fifteenth week without wages. Every kind of trade union resource is exhausted. There are whole areas where $2 a week is all a woman gets to keep her entire home going. "No relief is given to men, to boys over fourteen, or to children under twelve months. Private resources have helped, but now we are faced with a condition that makes it simply necessary to appeal abroad. We have appealed to Europe, and now we are appealing to America."

Status Quo. The "condition" of British trade unionism was starkly revealed last week by President Havelock Wilson of the Seamen's Union: "Nearly every trade union in Great Britain is bankrupt in consequence of the disastrous collapse of the General Strike (TIME, May 24). . . . Hundreds of thousands of men are refusing to pay dues to their unions. . . . The men are deserting and forming new unions." Total Deadlock. The striking miners have voted during the past fortnight on a peace proposal submitted by a group of English bishops (TIME, July 26, Aug. 9) for the settlement of the coal strike. Though the bishops proposal had the endorsement of the Miners' Federation Executive Committee, it was rejected last week by the miners 367,650 to 333,036. Rationally considered, this rejection displayed considerable mass common sense among the miners, for Premier Baldwin had already announced that the bishops proposal was not acceptable to the Government and consequently there existed no chance of putting it into effect. Shrewd Laborites deplored, however, the psychological effect of this rebuff to the potent and, in this instance, sympathetic Church of England.

* The "lockout" (so called by the miners) consisted in the posting by the mine owners of an offer of work at a wage less than that which the miners had previously announced they would accept.