The cause of this strike is that wages have been so reduced that the miners can no longer earn enough to support themselves.

The men declare that the strike has been forced upon them by the poor pay they have received, and that they have been expecting and preparing for it for some time past.

They hope to make the strike general, and that it shall be the biggest ever known.

The miners all over the country have been ordered to quit work, and it is expected that they will do so.

The men in West Virginia at first refused, but the latest reports are that they are gradually falling in line with the rest.

In many districts the miners have been offered the price they ask if they will only go back to work.  They have invariably refused, saying that they will not resume work until the better rate of wages is made general in all the mines.

There is danger of a coal famine if the strike lasts very long.

Several of the Western manufacturing cities are already running short of coal, and though there is plenty at the pit’s mouth, the strikers will not allow it to be handled until their demands are complied with.

Efforts will be made to move this coal, and it is feared that the strikers will then become violent and riotous.  Up to the present time they have been very peaceable.

The Governor of Indiana has asked the Governors of Ohio, Illinois, and Pennsylvania to meet him, and discuss plans for arbitrating the difficulty.

England also has her labor troubles.  A great strike is going on in London among the engineers.

It is a struggle for an eight-hour working day.

The men do not insist that they shall only work eight hours a day, but that eight hours shall be considered the full day’s labor, and all the work they do over that shall be regarded as overtime, and paid for.

The strikers have a large fund in reserve to fall back upon, from which they will each receive a certain weekly sum to give them the necessaries of life until the trouble is adjusted.

The fight promises to be a long and bitter one, for the employers declare that they must hold out till they win, as defeat means ruin to them.

The ship-building trade will be the one most seriously affected by the strike.

G.H.  ROSENFELD.

INVENTION AND DISCOVERY.

DETACHABLE SHELVING FOR WINDOWS.—­The scent and the sight of flowers are the source of so much enjoyment to most persons, and the means of keeping them in our houses, as a rule, is such a puzzle, that the “detachable shelving for windows” ought to find favor with everybody, young or old.

This shelving is an apparently simple arrangement of three shelves connected by strong braces running from one to another, and attached to the sides of the window in two places by screw-eyes and nuts which are securely fastened in the outer frame of the window.  Simple as it appears, it is very ingeniously contrived, and forms a most desirable substitute for the window-ledge itself, which is seldom wide enough for flower-pots to stand on with any degree of safety.