"If I were in office now," said ex-Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin last week with Cheshire-cat complacence, "everyone would be blaming me for this cotton strike!"
Half a million sturdy Lancashire cotton folk had ceased to spin and weave. Their grievance was specific, precisely stated. The mill owners had announced a 12½% wage cut. That would pare the average wage of each male Lancashire breadwinner from a pitiful 47 shillings ($11.08) weekly to a scandalous 41 shillings ($9.84). Sisters, wives and mothers, long since driven by necessity to...
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