The Press Thursday, June 13, 1929. The British Coal Industry.

Press, Volume LXV, Issue 19644, 13 June 1929, Page 8

The Press Thursday, June 13, 1929. The British Coal Industry.

We print this morning a cable message forecasting that the first really difficult problem to confront the new Labour Ministry in England will be that of the coal industry. The Miners' Federation, we are told, is demanding a national agreement, a national minimum wage, and the repeal of the Eight Hours Act. English papers to hand by the latest mail devote much space to this question and give summaries of the Mines Department's statistics of costs of production in the year 1923. It cannot be said that the figures make pleasant reading, for despite a further reduction of 80,000 in the average number of miners employed, and an improvement in the rate of output per shift, ' the aggregate loss amounted to nearly £lO million. In comparison with 1927, net costs were reduced by £22.9 million, but the coal disposed of was 10.3 million tons less, and proceeds were reduced by £27.3 million. The only hopeful sign is an improvement in the position for the December quarter, though the Economist attributes this largely to the abnormally severe weather, and doubts whether it justifies optimism for the future. The issue of the statistics quoted coincides with the issue of a Report by the League of Nations on the coal industries of the world in which it is pointed out that there is no prospect of an increase in the world demand for coal, and that an increase in Britain's export trade in coal will necessarily be at the expense of the industry in Germany, Belgium, Poland, and elsewhere. This rules out subventions or bounties as a means of helping the British owners, for these would provoke retaliatory measures from other coal-producing countries and would postpone the inevitable reorganisation of the industry as an international rather than a national unit. On this last point practically all the English journals seem to be in agreement. International action is generally regarded as indispensable to the handling of England's coal problem, but the immediate difficulty is that the industry in England is not functioning as a national unit. In South Wales, for instance, where he improvement of the December quarter has been most noticeable, neither the owners nor the men are much inclined to talk about reorganisation. Until the owners and the men also are ready to take a national view of the industry, no international action is possible.