=Match-Girls’ Strike.=--The years 1888 and 1889 marked a great upheaval in the labour market. The first saw the match-girls’ strike, the second the dockers’ strike. The great silent mass of struggling, starving, unskilled labour then for the first time found voice, and its utterance, expressed in the unmistakable terms of a deadly struggle, and following hard upon the revelations made before the Commission on the Sweating System, brought home to the outside world the real state of things prevailing in the lower ranks of labour. Thus the public mind was prepared to show something more than passive sympathy with the rebellion which broke out soon afterwards among unskilled labourers. The strike of the girls in Messrs. Bryant and May’s factory, though dwarfed in interest by the dockers’ strike which followed, was still a remarkable episode, unique indeed in the history of combination among women. The beginning of the strike found the girls entirely without organization, its close left them with increased wages, a union nearly a thousand strong, and for some time afterwards considerably in excess of that figure. The strikers were ably and courageously led by Mrs. Annie Besant and Mr. Herbert Burrows, and their success was also due in no small degree to the support of the London Trades Council, which took the part of the girls, and sent a deputation to press their claims upon the firm. By thus gaining over public sympathy and winning the open countenance of the official element in Trades Unionism the match-girls’ strike may be said to have marked a new departure, for, though similar help had often been rendered by Trades Councils before, the publicity attached to this occasion made it specially noteworthy. Public opinion, too, though a fickle friend, is still a friend worth having, and whilst its frown is a penalty which employers do not willingly incur, its restraining effect upon hasty action on the other side is also not without benefit. A certain vague sentiment with regard to the physical weakness of women and their patience under poverty and suffering helps to keep public opinion favourable on the whole, while their disorganized condition prevents them, as a rule, from adopting the aggressive measures which shock and terrify society. So for the present the outside world looks kindly upon women’s unions, the more so as these organisations make no demands upon its purse.