The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. SATURDAY, JUNE 12, 1926. THE MEANING OF COAL.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 138, 12 June 1926, Page 8

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo.

SATURDAY, JUNE 12, 1926. THE MEANING OF COAL.

For the cause that lacks assistance, For the wrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that we can do.

Two important comments upon the crisis in the coal industry are supplied by recent cable messages from Home. One of these statements is to the effect that the closing down of the British mines has meant a great increase in exports from Continental coal-bearing areas; and Poland has already succeeded in capturing the Scandinavian coal markets from Britain. But an even more interesting light is thrown upon the present situation by the Earl of Birkenhead's warning that no settlement is possible which would permanently raise the price of coal, because manufacturers at Home are already driven to desperate straits in their effort to meet the competition of

foreign rivals. The facts and arguments to which we have referred should help our readers to understand the disastrous character of the collapse of Britain's coal industry. Its importance, indeed, can hardly be over-estimated, because coal production is not only a very extensive and profitable industry in itself, but it supplies the fuel and the motive power which are required for the maintenance of the British manufacturing system. It is more than half a century since Jevons compiled his epoch-making work on "The Coal Question," and even to-day comparatively few people appear to understand the extent to which coal has been a factor in the progress and prosperity of Britain, and still plays a dominating part in every phase and aspect of the nation's industrial and commercial life.

Jevons was the first, and in some ways' the greatest, of all the economic authorities who have maintained that the industrial greatness of Britain has been built up on cheap coal. And no one has emphasised more strongly the warning that because our coal supplies are not inexhaustible, the time must come when increasing cost of production will tend to raise the price of coal, relative to purchasing power, and thus administer a sudden and violent check to the expansion of Britain's industries and her seaborne trade. "We are drawing more and more upon a capital which yields no annual interest, but, once turned into light and heat and motive power, is "one for ever into space." Nor is there any indication that the substitution of oil or water power, or even electricity, will, so far as Britain is concerned, render the nation less dependent in the future upon this great "key industry."

It is, of course, impossible to import coal in large quantities with advantage, because it is bulky, and foreign charges are correspondingly heavy. But a large export of coal has always been in modern times an important factor in our seaborne commerce, because coal leaves Britain largely as ballast. "A great part of our shipping would have to leave our ports half empty unless there were some make-weight or natural supply of bulky cargo as back-carriage, to balance our heavy imports or raw materials and foodstuffs." Thus it is clear that, as Britain's industrial and commercial prosperity has been based on cheap coal, so her existence in an economic sense

depends upon its continuous production and sale. The mine-owners two year. ago pointed out that in' 1922 the whole of Britain's imported food was paid for by 64 days' output of coal. An' ample supply of cheap coal is thus indispensable if Britain is to recoup her recent losses and is not to fall rapidly behind her rivals in the struggle for commercial and industrial existence. In these facts consists the momentous and tragic significance of tbe coal crisis to-day.