The published resolution of the Burnley masters to close their
mills towards the end of the present month, and to stand by each other in resisting the demands of the factory hands for higher
wages, is a step in many ways important; especially in connexion with a similar state of affairs at Preston and Bacnp. That the masters cannot afford to pay the higher wages, we hold to be proved ; indeed, the case is so clear that it must be obvious to many on the side of the men, if it were only stated to them; and this is the point which we doubt on the side of the masters—whether they state their case with sufficient explicitness, and whether they sufficiently encourage those hands who would make common cause with them. In the mean time, the step is important, not only as throwing thousands out of work, but as extending the district in which the tuition of our manufacturing machinery is suspended or likely to be so.
