KING COAL.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 224, 22 September 1925, Page 5

KING COAL.

HIS THRONE TOTTERING. EFFECTS OF RECENT CRISIS CONFUSION WORSE CONFOUNDED. "Lhe outcome of the recent crisis in the coal industry in Britain lias been to make both economic and political confusion worse confounded isavs a London correspondent). The Labour! movement is in many minds. One section I claims the result as an overwhelming! victory for the worker. : another asserts j that the workers have been duped again, inasmuch as the united workingclass front presented to the Government simply resulted in the bosses having their profits guaranteed. Yet another section hails it as a victory for direct action on the industrial field as opposed to political action on the floor of the Ilou.e of Commons, or in the by-ways of Downing Street; while a fourth section see? it but as postponement of action until their opponents are in a better j position to fight. ! The Conservatives are divided into j two schools of thought: one taking the] view that Baldwin has weakly ° and \ shamefully surrendered them to the render mercies of the '"wild men" of Labour: and the other that he is a new Mo*ea leading them into the promised land of industrial peace and plenty where everybody's profits will be guaranteed in perpetuity. What the views of Mr. Baldwin and his Government are no one seems to know, including, it is freely stated, both Mr. Baldwin and his Government. However, behind all the welter and froth which every big crisis calls forth, th.r. lies the central fact that the British coal industry is in a very perilous position, and that the real issue is not wages and hours or profits and royalties but its very existence itself. It is an economic fact that an industry that cannot support its workers " must either submit to radical revision or perish: and it is this very fact that the coal industry must face. It is absurd to suppose that one of the basic industries of the country can continue to live on subsidies, because this is eventually equivalent to the theory that a community can live "by taking in one another's washing.'' Continental Complications. Post-war Britain has had to face many shocks, and the present awakening to the real position of the coal industry is one of the latest. Hitherto j coal has been an export trade, but at \ the present moment the British coal : exporter could hardly find a market in Europe, if he was to sell for only the 'cost of transportation. The Peace . Treaties provided that Germany should ; send coal as reparations to France. ! This coal which France got for nothing she proceeded to sell to our customers at cut rates. Our coal industry was hard hit by this, but if that was the sole, or even the predominant trouble it would be merely a matter of weathering a few bad years, and this might be very easily accomplished by means of a subsidy. But the Peace Treaties decided to reduce Germany, and part of this reduction process was the cutting-off of important coalfields in the . aar and L'pper Silesia from their natural centres of consumption. Germany was forced either to import—and pay duties and , other charges—coal from these fields.' or find a substitute or another source of supply. The intensive utilisation of brown coal allowed Germany to dispense with Silesian coal, with the result j that Poland is now looking to Rumania, i Czeeho-Slovakia. and Hungary to consume the coal formerly taken by Gerl many.

France has completed the reorganisa- ! tion of her mining areas, and, as a I result of improved methods, her proI duction is in excess of the pre-war | standard. France, Italy, and Spain I may be written off as large consumers lof British coal on account of thi_ reI organisation, and also as a result of 1 electrification. Tn addition the world |at large, including Britain herself, is i decreasing its consumption of coal in I favour of oil. I New Ideas Needed. These are the stern realities of tlie situation, and the old nineteenth century ideas about Britain's industrial supremacy resting upon her great reserves of coal must be drastically revised. Coal as a primary export trade is doomed, and doomed irrevocably. And just as these facts are seeping into the consciousness of the industry, along comes Mr. Winston ' Churchill with his restoration of the i gold standard and throws the coal | owners into such a panic that they I immediately turn on the miners a de- | mand that they shall cut their already | uneconomic wage, lengthen their hours jof labour and generally sink down to a standard of life which, in actuality, would be much below the admittedly bad pre-war conditions. In one fell swoop the gold standard turned the price of British coal in Brazil from 4. cents a ton less than American coal into 63 cents a ton higher than the American, while internally in Britain the gold standard cannot hope to make an appreciable lowering of the cost of I livin_- for a long time to come.

The solution of tbe co .1 industry's immediate problem lies in turning its present position as a r.w material export industry to that of a manufacturing industry using coal as raw material. The industry must concentrate on more efficient production, better utilisation, more thorough re-

I coverv of by-products and association ! with "derivative industries. Coal must jbe made the core around which an , immense complexity of producing inI dustrie-s would centre. But before this can come about a whole revision :of our present industrial outlook is : necessary, and any inquiry into the coal industry which neglects or obscures the , necessity for such a change will merely ; serve to add one report more to the ! musty piles of useless documents acI curoulattne in the pigeon-holes of Govj ernment Departments.