Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 19, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 January 1898 — BIG MILL STRIKE IS NOW ON. [ARTICLE]

BIG MILL STRIKE IS NOW ON.

Cotton Operatives Refuse to Accept a Cut iu Wages. A reduction in the wages of 125,000 operatives employed in nearly 150 cotton mills in New England, which the manufacturers decided upon ns a temporary remedy for the depression in the' cotton goods industry of the North, went into effect Monday morning. In six of the mill centers, namely. New Bedford, Biddeford, Saep, Full River, Fitchburg and Lewiston, 10,745 mill hands struck. The twenty-two mills of tlie former city, which gave employment to 8,730 hands, were shut, down because the operatives have refused to accept the reduction, and the Strike thus inaugurated promises to be oue of the most protracted and stubbornly contested in the history of the textile industry. The operatives are fighting for the nbolition of the fining system, in addition to a restoration of wages. There was no violence about the mill gates, and uo large gatherings on the streets. A • The 3,500 employes nt the Laconia and Fepperell mills at Biddeford refused to go to Work under the new schedule and it is thought the strike there will not be settled easily. About 1,(500 of the working force at the York mills iu Saco went on strike and those mills will be closed. The Androscoggin mills at Lewiston and the King Philip plant in Fall River were handicapped by a strike of a number of the hands and the Queen City mills of Burlington, Vt., are closed on account of a strike which followed the posting of notices of a reduction. In Fitchburg 225 employes of the Noekege mills struck, and in the King Philip mills at Fall River 1,100 quit. In Burlington 300 arc out and in Lewiston 1,200 struck. The mills in Fall River, with the exception of the Fall River Iron Works and Durfee & Seaconnett plants, reduced wages Jan. 3, on the same day a cut down went into effect nt the big Amoskcag corporation of Manchester, the Naumkeng mills at Salem, the China, Webster and Pembroke mills at Suncook, N. 11., and a number of towns in Worcester County. The Fall River mills employ about 27,000, the Amoskcag 9,000, and the others which adopted the new scale the first of the year nlxiut S,(MM) hands. The reduction Aionday affected the cotton mills of Maine, Rhode Island, Connecticut, the mills of New Bedford, Lowell and a large number of smaller centers in Massachusetts and New Hampshire*! In New Bedford alone $22,000,000 capital is rendered idle’by the strike.