"Strike's Off!"

Spinning and weaving Lancashire went back to work, last week, after the most stupendous cotton strike since the War. A half-million sturdy craftsfolk had walked out rather than take a 12 1/2% cut in their meagre pay (TIME, Aug. 12). Last week they trooped triumphantly back to the mills. Under a scheme set up by that sensible Scot, Prime Minister James Ramsay MacDonald, they would be paid the old wage, at least until the arbiters had made an award. When first news of this compromise reached such famed cotton towns as Manchester, Blackburn and Oldham, joyous craftsfolk paraded and snake-danced through their dingy slums, shouting "Strike's Off! STRIKE'S OFF!"

Hard-headed Ramsay MacDonald insisted that both the workers' unions and the employers' associations bind themselves by signed agreement to accept the ruling of his Arbitral Board of Five. Two arbiters were chosen from each side. Umpire was a sterling Lancashire man, Mr. Justice Rigby Swift of the King's Bench Division of the High Court. Finally the Prime Minister declared that in case of proven need the Government would grant a "temporary accommodation" (presumably a Treasury subsidy) to keep wages at the old level while the industry is getting on its feet.

"Lancashire must put its house in order," declared Scot MacDonald in a potent manifesto to the press. "Taking the industry as a whole it requires a far more active co-operative organization so that the skill of the operatives, the natural advantages of the county of Lancashire and its inherited opportunities in reputation and market may be used to the utmost under modern conditions."

Economists, statistically commenting on the cotton strike, estimated that it had cost $2,000,000 in lost orders, $15,000,000 in lost wages, close to $1,000,000 in doles made to strikers from their unions.