The threatened strike in the Krupp works at Essen, Germany,
simultaneously with the strike of the Welsh coal miners and
the walkout in the Remington Arms Factory in the United
States, would tend to show that labor in the belligerent and
neutral countries is seeking advantages under the strain of
the enormous output of munitions to feed the war. Only in
France, whose people are making supreme sacrifices, and in
Russia, whose factories are not yet organized for the
nation, does industrial peace prevail. In England the
Munitions bill, with its proposals for compulsory
arbitration and for limiting profits unweakened, was passed
on July 1st. The bill retained, also, the power for the
Government to proclaim the extension of its strike-stopping
authority to other trades than the munitions trades.
An account of the conditions relating to labor in the
various countries, beginning with the speech, in part, of
Lloyd George, introducing the Munitions bill in the House of
Commons on June 20, appears below.