OIL AND THE COALMINERS

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 59, 6 September 1913, Page 13

OIL AND THE COALMINERS

In days past mbbs have wrecked maohinery (the work of inventive genius) because it happened to be labour-saving in the narrow sense/ though, -in the wider field, a produder of more work than ever. To-day the relehtless march of science, for marine propulsion purposes, is away from coal and towards oil. Whereupdn the London Daily Citizen remarks : — " \^e must register at once our ■warning against any course of action which may injuriously affect the great mass of men who work the coal mines of this country. No opinions from experts, no forebodings about the future, no grisly spectres of defeat in War, will lead us away from tho first consideration, namely, the lives of these men. There, are one million of them With theif* families they represent a community of no fewer than five million people. Here is a nation in itself. What the Government and all its' high ofneiah have to ldam straightaway is that in no conceivable circumstances will the devastation of that five million people be permitted." t ' "It is highly instructive^ to note that hehceforth.the British Navy, as long as it consumes coal, can depend on the f whole-hearted approval of the Labour movement," salrically says the Morning Post. »