STILL OUT.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 74, 27 March 1912, Page 6

STILL OUT.

When the Coal Mines Bill was before the House of Commons on Friday, the outlook was so bright that Air. .). Ramsay Mac Donald expressed the hope that it would be found, unnecessary to proceed with the Bill on Monday. But before Monday came the clouds had gathered again, and the sky is now as dark as ever. The Coal Mines Bill was not proceeded with on Monday, but the rea«m was of the opposite Kind to that contemplated by the Chairman of the Labour Pnrty. He had hopqd that a, peaceful settlement would dispense with the necessity for proceeding witli the Bill, but the fact is that a peaceful settlement is so far off that the Bill is considered useless for the present. When the measure fir-st made ite appearance, we suggested that it promised to facilitate a fcftttiement. if the parties were in • re«»sU4ble moodj but that filling thlt

condition there was no hope in it. The favourable reception at first accorded to the compromise proposed by Sir Edward Grey gave ground for the belief that this condition would be satisfied, but though some of the Labour M.P.'s may be ready to patch up a peace the Miners' Federation is in no such mood. Instead of piloting the Coal Mines Bill through its final stages in the House of Commons, Mr. Asquith and Sir Edward Grey were engaged on Monday in the vain endeavour to induce the conference of masters and men to come to terms. The Miners' Federation insists upon a definite statutory minimum of 5s a day for men and 2s for boys, with power, of course, to the district boards to increase these amounts for any particular district, but not to reduce them. It was pointed out by Mr. Bonar Law during the debate in committee that the schedule prepared by the Miners' Federation actually proposed a lower rate than 5s 1 for certain districts. It was also pointed out by Sir Edward Grey in his address tb the conference that in Northumberland and Durham the question is often complicated by the provision of coal and cottages for the men in addition to their wages. An insistence upon the proposed minimum in these cases might lead to a proportionate or more than proportionate curtailment of these non-scheduled benefits. Nevertheless, the miners' representatives at the conference declined to budge an inch, and the struggle still goes on. The most hopeful sign in the news of the last twenty-four hours is that the miners are showing an increasing disposition to break away from the leading strings of their federation. The three hundred miners in North Wales fcho, pursuant to the announcement made last week, returned to work on Monday, have obtained a minimum wage, but of whao amount and on what terms is not stated. The probability is that the minimum is that now demanded by tho federation, and whatevei may be the conditions for which the owners have stipulated by way of safeguard, there is surely a better chance of their being observed when amicably adopted by the parties than if imposed against the will of one &ide or the other after a quasi-litigious controversy before the district board. It is remarkable that 4he miners of Wales represent the two extremes in this matter. In «he South, although the outbreak of the present trouble found the onions still impoverished by the great Cambrian mine strike of 1910-11, a spirit jo implacable prevails that it has been publicly denounced by some of tho English Labour 'eaders. Yet it is from Norti? Wales that the first news of a considerable defection from the lead of the Miners' Federation comes to hand. However favourable to the men the terms may be, the settlement is a repudiation of a cardinal point in the federation's programme, viz., that all, th« men should- stay out until every dispute is settled. The Scottish defections are still more significant. A thousand of the strikers j have resumed work jn Lanarkshire and hundreds elsewhere. In these cases we are not even told whether a minimum wag© hae been guaranteed, but the same general remark applies as to the , preceding case. Each of these piecemeal settlements is another nail in the coffin of syndicalism, another blow at the revolutionaries who would rather run the I risk of paralysing the country before a foreign invader than lose any chance of pursuing' their vendetta against the capitalist. It is, at any rat«, better that the country should continue to face a loss of £10,000,000 a week than that it should capitulate- bo such doctrine. Meanwhile, . the sorely harassed Governmentmay be glad of a good excuse for postponing the Coal Mines Bill. Can it be worth while to risk ,defeat for the sake of a measure which, except by the consent of the disputant*, can do very little good?