Laborite Victory

The British Labor party made startling gains last week, when approximately half the Laborite candidates for municipal borough council seats were elected during polling which involved one-third of the borough councils in England. For the first time in history Sheffield, the great cutlery centre, went Laborite; and at Leeds, a great Conservative stronghold, half the new council was captured by Labor.

The immediate result of the election appeared to be that Premier Baldwin (Conservative) seriously bestirred himself for the first time in a month or more to settle the coal strike. The leaders of the Miners' Federation were summoned to the Premier's residence, and negotiations got under way in a much more promising spirit of compromise than has existed heretofore.

Laborite news organs such as the Daily Herald proclaimed that the Premier's later day intervention in the coal strike had come too late and that "a tidal wave will overwhelm Premier Baldwin at the next election."

One W. T. Sampson of Gananoque, Canada, became so exercised last week lest his sister in London lack for coal that he packed up and shipped to her in eight wooden boxes two tons of coal labeled "BLACK DIAMONDS."