COAL DISPUTE

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 93, 21 April 1933, Page 8

COAL DISPUTE

STATE INTERVENTION

COMPANIES DISAGREE

[By Telegraph.—Press Association.) AUCKLAND, This Day. Two of the five companies operating in the Waikato. coalfield declined to attend a conference held today with the Under-Secretary of Mines (Mr. A. H. Kimbell), who arrived from Wellington for tho purpose. Mr. Kimbell will confer privately with these two companies. Mr. Kimbell, in a statement, said that his object was, to smooth out differences, so that the production and distribution of coal should proceed along orderly planned lines. It was clear that if several of tho mines were forced by uneconomic competition to close, many miners would be rendered idle and much capital lost. . The companies which refused to attend the conference are Taupiri and Glen Afton. The Taupiri Company declared: "The existing strike has been caused wholly by the individual, ill-con-sidered, regrettable, and unjustifiable action of the Benown Collieries." Tjie president of the New Zealand Coal Owners' Association (Colonel Holgate) said he did not consider any good purpose could be achieved by the State intervening at present. ■ Mr. Kimbell's conference with the Eenown, Pukemiro, and Wilton Companies is being held in camera.