MINERS'EIGHT HOURS.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 238, 1 July 1908, Page 7

MINERS'EIGHT HOURS.

CONFLICTING VIEWS.

A WORKERS' EXECUTIVE AGAINST IT. BALLOT TO BE TAKEN. (Nx TELEGHAriI—riIESS association— copyeight.) (lfec.'juno 30, 9.15 p.m.) ( • London, Juno 30. The Council 'of'the Northumberland Minors' Association, by 55 votes to 23, condomnod the Minors' Eight Hours Bill. Tho miners oi' the district will shortly take a ballot upon the. question. .' VARYING CONDITIONS. The varying interests and working conjditions of coal miners in different parts of tlio United Kingdom aro indicated by the following article in "The Times":—"ln tho South Wales coalfield the Bill is welcomed and vigorously defended by the mining population of Glamorgan and Monmouthshire; on the other hand, it is meeting with strenuous opposition from colliery proprietors, railway and dock companies, tinplate manufacturers, and all the other largo coal consumers in the district. For various* local reasons the Bill possesses a greater interest to South Wales than it,-does perhaps to any other coalfield in tho United Kingdom. In Fifesliire an eight hours bank to bank day has been, practically-speaking, in operation, for 3G years, and in. Cumberland for the past 30 years, \nnd 'in tho Great Northern Coalfield (Durham and. Northumberland) the.- present output is produced by' men and boys • working on the average onlyi a 'few minutes more than eight hours; but iri the South Wales and Monmouthshire coalfield tho working hours are an hour per • day iiiore than in tho other coalfields of, Great Britain, the average, time bank to bank for all purposes underground being 9hr. 4Smin., as compared with Shr. 43 min. in the other parts of .the country. Tho yearly number of -days 'worked per week in tjio South Wales coalfield for the ten years 1897-1906 amounted;to 5.55 days, compared with an average ,of 5.23 in Northumberland, 5.40 in Durham, 5.1G in Yorkshire, 4.95 in Derbyshire, 4.97 in Staffordshire, and 5.53 in Fifeshire. Further, while as stated in the departmental committee's report under 32-per feent. of-all the underground workers in British Coal mines are employed in the Lancashire and Welsh , coalfields, ; the aggregate. hours spent 'underground on a full day in excoss of eight per man are divided a 9 follows:—s4 per cent., in the Lancashire and Welsh coalfields,' and 46 'per cent, in the rest of Great Britain, so that more than half of tho reduction of man-hours on a full' day would be in districts employing less than one-third of the miners, of the country.' These few facts aro given in, order to show- the peculiar bearihg of' the Government's ■ proposals , on tlio South -Wales-'Coal industry, and to explain the exceptional. interest which the rficasure has aroused.''