It was rumoured in the beginning of the week that
the men employed by the Gas Light and Coke Company, who supply an immense district in West London, indignant at the defeat of the South London gasmen, intended to strike, and place West London in darkness. Up to Friday evening, how- ever, this rumour had not been substantiated, any more than the similar one of a strike among the coal-porters. We repeat that the servants of any Company, if they feel an impulse for such self-sacrifice, have a right to ruin themselves for a cause which they think great. To justify them, however, they must be acting freely, and not under dictation, and especially a dictation which may turn out to be illegal ; a command to turn out in order to coerce a particular Company with which the strikers are unconnected, being, as is asserted, forbidden by the law of conspiracy. It seems certain that opinion is over- whelmingly against the threatened action, and that the com- munity will support almost any device calculated to defeat it. The opportunity will be a splendid one for the electric engineers ; but we fear they are not fully prepared to take advantage of it. Applied science in our day can do most things, but it is often fettered by the cumbrousness of its appliances. If we could have, as we shall have, good and cheap moveable electric lights, all the gasmen in England might strike without much hurting anybody.
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