on, these men were notified by the association that if they did
not give up their special contracts and content themselves with the
usual wages earned by others of their class, they would, in the first
instance, be fined, out of their own money in the hands of the
association, a pound a week for a given time, at the end of which, if
they still remained in disobedience, their pensions would be forfeited!

I should be glad to know what 'employer' ever devised a more shameless
plan than this for reducing workmen to slavery, moral and financial?
Probably the laws of England, if called upon, would protect them against
such outrages. But how is a workman in such circumstances to call upon
the laws? How is he to meet the legal cost of defending his rights? How
is he to face the organised hostility of men of his own class?

The 'strike' at Anzin in 1884 ended as 'strikes' are apt to do. A
certain proportion of the men who had been foremost in accepting or
promoting it disappeared from the service of the company; others, and
the majority, escaped from the domination of the 'syndicate' and of M.
Basly. That the conduct of the company throughout the crisis was such as
to commend itself to the workmen in general may, I think, be inferred
from the fact that a fresh attempt to bring about a 'strike' at Anzin,
since I visited the place, completely failed. The attempt originated
with the leaders of a 'strike' which was actually carried out in the
mines of the adjoining Department of the Pas-de-Calais. The means
employed in 1884 to intimidate the workmen at Anzin were again used. The
troops and the gendarmerie were, however, called out at Anzin, not to
protect Capital against Labour, but to protect the working-men of Anzin
who chose to keep out of the 'strike,' against men of their own class
who tried to drive them into it. In this case the original 'strike'
seems to have been provoked by local rather than general causes. The
managers of the mines in the Pas-de-Calais had resolved to increase the
output of their mines. This necessitated a considerable increase in the
number of miners employed, and this augmented demand for mining labour,
not unnaturally, led the men to demand an advance on their wages. They
were encouraged to demand this advance, too, by a somewhat sudden rise
in the market-price of certain descriptions of coal, and it is not
perhaps surprising that it should not have occurred to them to ask
themselves whether the rise