The Press Monday, June 21, 1926. The Coal Strike.

Press, Volume LXII, Issue 18723, 21 June 1926, Page 8

The Press Monday, June 21, 1926. The Coal Strike.

It is a staggering thought that the coal ' sbd.t- is now costing the Homeland £ eight millions a week and will soon l be costing it ten millions, and that this > stupendous waste goes on because ' neither the owners nor the miners nor i the general public will accept the ) responsibility of stopping it. How » much the owners would have to concede s is not very clear, since the Eoyal 6 Commission found that in the fourth c quarter of 1925 there was an actual r loss of Is 6d, taking an average, on I every ton of coal -nined, and that it was only the subsidy of 3s a ton which I turned this los 3 i&w a profit The c contribution that would have to be made by the general public, though it might not equal the subsidy c (£22,000,000 in nine months), would * have to be Is 6d a ton at least, and 1 it is not surprising, apart altogether from deeper economic issues, that the Government refuses to go on asking ( men (shipwrights, say) earning 45s a j week to subsidise others earning from seventy shillings to ninety. And before we can say that the miners should * make the first offer we require to know 1 a good deal more than most people ' in New Zealand have so far been told about their actual earnings. The Royal Commission found that the . earnings of the skilled hewer range ' from £3 10s to £4 10s a week. In ; Scotland, Northumberland; and most ] of Durham an eleven-day fortnight is ' the usual practice, so that a week is 5J shifts. In bther districts, comprising about two-thirds of the total industry, a six-day week is now the rule, though men on afternoon duty often ' work only five shifts. In South Wales, ! however, such men are paid for six ' shifts even though they work only five; ' and since over the country as a whole ' 5J shifts, apart from breakdowns and '' irregular employment, was found to ! be "an understatement" of the length of the full.week, the wages are usually over 76s a week at least The lowest adult mining wage in any of the large districts was found to be 45s a week for six days in Lancashire—the minimum subsistence wage of 7s 6*d a shift. In Northumberland and Durham <(for 5J shifts) the weekly wage is sometimes as low as 41s 6d, but in those districts all married men get free coal, and free houses, or what is considered to be an equivalent allowance,, in addition to their weekly earnings. What these wages mean in actual comfort (or discomfort) it is, of course, very difficult to realise in a country with such different standards as we have I here; But it will help us to understand the coal-miner's position, relatively to that of his fellow-workers, if we say that on 5i shifts he is. worse off than transport workers and builders but materially better off than : men possessing about the same degree of skill in the engineering and shipbuilding trades. Or if we examine his circumstances from another angle, as the Commission did —in respect of progress made since the war—we find again that he has not done so well as railway and tramway men, or as the workers in such industries as printing, building, and baking, but that he has done a good deal better than those engaged in the great exporting industries (iron and steel, engineering, shipbuilding, and, say, cotton) which before the war contributed so largely to Britain's prosperity. Anqthof interesting fact discovered by the Commission was this: that while in most industries the wages of the lower-paid (and less skilled) have risen since before the war much more rapidly than those of the more highly-paid men, skill in the mines has kept pace with lack of skill, or almost done so. It has to be remembered, alsq, that the " cuts ". named in the owners' original proposal were very severe—nearly 20 per cent, in some cases—and that if such a reduc- . tion were made on existing hours it would mean .very real hardship to all the men with families. It. is now, how- , ever, suggested that the men should | return for three months at pre-strike s rates, but agree to spend another hour I a day underground. Before the war j they worked 81 hours a day in the l pits, and nine on the surface, and it | begins to appear that what stands be- [ tween them now and worse days than l they have ever known before is their reluctance to revert to a position half- ' way back to those pre-war hours.