A foretaste of the expected Labour troubles was afforded in London by a strike (Jan. 21), in very cold weather, of the coal porters, after the failure of negotiations with the employers for increased pay; two days later the coal carmen came out also, and the number on strike was about 10,000. Permits were at first given by the strikers, but afterwards stopped, for the carriage of coal to hospitals and infirmaries; but the clerks and travellers of the employers, and the students at the hospitals, volunteered to take the places of the strikers, and vehicles of all sorts, including motor-cars, were lent to replace the carts. The strike ended (Jan. 28) with concessions by the employers, one firm having previously given way. But the dispute in the London building trade (p. 3) was more serious. The Master Builders' Association complained that, some twenty times in the past nine months, men employed on one or other building job had suddenly refused to work with a non-unionist; and they demanded that each employee individually should sign an undertaking not to strike against the employment of non-unionists, under penalty of a fine of 20_s._ The men declined to discuss these conditions; and on Saturday, January 24, a number were dismissed, and a general lock-out was threatened. There was some doubt if the proposed fine would be legally enforceable; and, as the men were dismissed, they claimed unemployment benefit under the Insurance Act, but in vain. And the dispute was complicated by the raising of other questions as a condition of the resumption of work. About a thousand of the men submitted; the great majority remained firm. Among other examples of unrest was a prolonged strike of chairmakers at High Wycombe, which led to some rioting; of the taxi-drivers of London; of the municipal employees at Blackburn; and of the elementary school-teachers in Herefordshire. And the Prime Minister (Feb. 3) felt constrained to decline the request made by a deputation of the Miners' Federation to extend the principle of the Minimum Wage Act to surface workers, thus widening the visible rift between Labour and the Government.