MINERS WANT NATIONALISATION.

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 109, 4 November 1925, Page 7

MINERS WANT NATIONALISATION.

Coal must be produced more cheaply in Great' Britain; but the (idea of cheapening production by decreasing wages is ruled out by the Miners' Federation, one of the most powerful trade unions in the world, which, in opposing a reduction in miners' wages, or alternatively, an increase in working hours, has the wholehearted support of' every section of the Labour movement in Great Britain. The best solution of the problem, according to the Miners' Federation, is nationalisation of the mines. There is much reason to doubt whether nationalisation would solve the problem; but, in any case, nationalisation is not the direction in which the present Conservative Government in Great 'Britain.-.will turn for solution. It is more probable that the Commission 1 of Inquiry appointed by the Government will recommend a system of grouping of the mines, similar to the (grouping system forced by Dr. Lloyd George's Coalition Government upon tho great railway companies of Britain, after the war end-

cd. It is obvious that many economies could be effected in tho cost of coal production by grouping the mines in the various coal fields. At present there are 1400 companies, working about 3000 pits. There are therefore 1400 boards of directors, running companies which compete with one another, and are exploited by coal merchants and other middlemen. The pits interfere wih one another's workings and drainage; they run their own little plants for supplying electric light and power; they compete with one another in tho demand for timber for propping. Co-opera-tion in the form of grouping would do much to reduce their expenditure, and thereby lessen the cost of producing coal. The owners of the land on which the coal fields are situated extract a royalty, which in the aggregate amounts to £6,000,000 a year. The royalty is only a . small item in the cost of production, but its existence through successive generations has become one of the chief grievances of the Miners' Federation, and there is little doubt that the Commission of Inquiry will recommend that the royalty owners be bought out, at the expense of the taxpayer.