A singular strike, which suggests a high degree of secret
organisation, began quite unexpectedly in Paris on Friday week among the electrical workmen, and for one night and a half the city was in comparative darkness. The theatres were closed, newspapers were produced in a reduced form and with great difficulty, and restaurants were lit with candles and the streets with sonic improvised acetylene flares. It appears that the concessions granted by the municipal authorities to certain electrical companies are about to expire, and the strike was intended to ensure in advance better terms for the workmen engaged by the group of companies negotiating for the new concessions. It is probable that the extraordinary indignation aroused by the social egotism of the strike was the real reason of its rapid termination. The chief sufferers were poor people, whose occupations were made impossible by the failure of the electric light. Newspapers of every shade of opinion, except Socialistic, joined in denouncing the strikers. On Monday the affair was discussed in the Chamber of Deputies, when the debate was really a duel between M. Clemenceau and M. Jaures. M. Jaures objected to the employment by the Government of sappers to replace the strikers. This was an example of the very intervention in Labour disputes which the Government had renounced; it was a virtual abolition of the right to strike. IL Clemenceau, in a slashing speech, asked IL Jaures if he would consent to see his children starved for sheer love of a principle. The Government had acted in the name of the right which every society had to live.
