"POLITICAL STUNT"

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 152, 29 June 1945, Page 3

"POLITICAL STUNT"

SOCIALISING MINES

EFFECTS OF STATE CONTROL

Socialisation of coal mining had now become a subject of propaganda, independent of its merits or disadvantages, declared Mr. Frank M. Winstone, chairman of Taupiri Coal Mines, Ltd., at the annual meeting of the company to-day. "It has become a political stunt," he said, "and, as such, is no longer submitted to unemotional and logical argument. If it were, the final clinching argument could certainly be found in the coal position to-day, after several years during which every aspect of coal, from the opening of a new mine to the final delivery to the consumer, is under direct Government control." . In both New Zealand and Britain extravagant claims had been made during the year that nationalisation of the mines would solve all the difficulties of the industry, but all the evidence appeared to prove the opposite, continued Mr. Winstone. During both wars the Government in Britain assumed control of coal mining, and on neither occasion had the output improved; in fact, on both occasions there had been a marked drop in the average output of a man for a shift. In New Zealand, under Government control, exactly the same result had been experienced. In the U.S.A., private enterprise, with 55,388 fewer men, had been able to increase output by over 172,000,000 tons during the war years. "Under bureaucratic central control, which is necessarily involved in socialisation, the essential virtues of imagination, initiative, foresight, courage to take risks, and the great energising force of personal responI sibility are entirely absent," he said.,