Democratic Sentinel, Volume 11, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 January 1888 — THE INDUSTRIAL REALM. [ARTICLE]

THE INDUSTRIAL REALM.

The strike among the flint-glass workers has extended from the western manufacturers to the eastern factories. In the east and west about fifteen thousand men aro now out. The strike bids fair to be a long and bitter one.

By tho strike in the anthracite regions it is estimated that 35,C00 men and boys aro thrown out of employment It is feared that many large factories and iron-works will be compelled to shutdown because of a shortage in the coal supply growing out of suspension of work in the mines. A Reading telegram reports that— Out of the sixty-eight collieries in the Schuylkill coal regions, forty of which are controlled by the Reading Railroad Company, only four resumed operations, and theßo with one-third of their usual forces. Had the striko of the Reading Railroad proven successful and traffic been entirely paralyzed, there c; uld not have been moro genuine alarm throughout the great industrial regions of the Schuylkill valley than there is to-day. The proprietors of large furnaces and iron works in this section predict that if the mines are shut down for two weeks the majority of the large establishments will be obliged to close, owing to the lack of a supply of coal. Many of them have been running for weeks short of coal, and most of them have less than a week’s supply on hand. All the Reading Company’s mines, fortyfive in number, are stopped, and 20,C00 miner»,at least are idle, says a Reading telegram of Thursday. Somo place the number of idle men as high as 50,000 in the Schuylkill basin alone, which, with 20,000 in the Lehigh, makes the strike a great one. Several of tlie individual colleries are. at work, but the Reading mines are without workmen.