William could rhyme off that letter by heart. It said everything so plainly. You would think from reading it that the coopers deserved to win the strike.

But they did not win. The strike lasted two months. It ended on November 11 after a meeting between the coopers and merchants. The paper reported that meeting. William didn't bother to cut out that story. It said this:

THE STRUGGLE OVER-COOPERS AGAIN AT WORK

The Coopers' strike is over. Union members went to work again this morning as usual. This is because of a meeting between coopers and the fish exporters who use the barrels. The meeting took place at the office of Bowring Brothers Ltd., at 5:30 last evening.

Union members at the meeting were president Power, and Messrs. Reid, Linegar and Rorke. The merchants present were the Honourables John Harvey, E. R. Bowring, James Baird, R. K. Bishop, and Messrs. W. C. Job, W. B. Grieve, and A. P. Goodridge. The coopers also had Sir Edward Morris with them.

Sir Edward Morris made a long speech. He said it was too bad the strike happened at the peak of the fish trade season. He said both sides had suffered. The coopers had lost their wages. The merchants were losing money too. They could not export fish without barrels.

The trouble with the coopers was that they did not want to give the outport cooper a chance. The outport coopers had no chance to join the union. They made good barrels. Then there were handy men. They did carpentry work on sunny days. On rainy days they made a few barrels to sell. The union men wanted to shut these people out.

Then Honourable E. R. Bowring made a speech. He showed clearly that the union men were wrong. He said they had made life hard for the merchants. Good men had come to make barrels for them when the strike was on. He wanted the merchants to stand by those men after the strike.

The union men did not argue. They decided to go back to work this morning. They agreed to work side by side with non-union men. It is good that the coopers ended the strike. It means they will avoid a lot of suffering, now that the hard winter is near.