'NOT MEN'S FAULT'

Auckland Star, Volume LXXV, Issue 57, 8 March 1944, Page 4

'NOT MEN'S FAULT'

TOWN COAL SHORTAGE

INCREASES IN CONSUMPTION (By Telegraph.—Parliamentary Reporter.) WELLINGTON, this day. "If the miners were given credit by the newspapers and public speakers for the work they really do, they would be very much less inclined to be irritable than they are," said Captain McCombs (Govt., Lyttelton) in the House of Representatives last evening. "The miners know the work they did last year and the year before was the hardest they have done for very many years, that the total of coal produced last year was a record and that the number of hours underground was the highest for many years," added Captain McCombs. "What do they get for it? They are snarled at on every possible occasion, and every possible thing that can be brought against them is published in the papers, and everybody who praises them is ridiculed."

Declaring that the coal was being turned out and that it was not the miners' fault that there was a shortage in the towns, he quoted figures to show the following increases in consumption: Railways from 435,000 tons to 600,000 tons; gas works, 205,000 tons to 268,000 tons; factories, 10 500 tons to 100,000 tons; lime and cement works, 70,000 tons to 144,000 tons; meat freezing works, 85,000 tons to 122,000 tons; butter and cheese factories, 136,000 tons to 154,000 tons.