The Evening Star FRIDAY, MARCH 12, 1926. THE COAL COMMISSION.

Evening Star, Issue 19196, 12 March 1926, Page 6

The Evening Star FRIDAY, MARCH 12, 1926. THE COAL COMMISSION.

The Coal Commission, appointed by tho British Government eight months ago, concluded its public hearing of evidence in January, and its anxiously awaited report has at length been published. Few Commissions have had so difficult a subject to investigate, and few can have worked under such a sense of anxiety as to the great issues dependent on ability or inability to point a way of escape from a seemingly hopeless position. Tho irony of that position is that master and man have been bitterly reproaching one another for their several misfortunes, whereas in tho opinion of many dispassionate observers these are attributable to a natural cause beyond the control of both parties. The position has been most dramatically put by Mr Bossom, an Englishman by birth, who is one of America’s best-known architects; “Labor, Capital, Middleman—not one of those is tho fundamental cause of England’s coal situation. It is coal itself.” There is much truth in this arresting statement. Many years ago'Jevons came to tho conclusion that tho coal mines of Britain would never be physically exhausted, but that the increasing cost of production would lead to their commercial exhaustion. One of tho fundamental questions which the present Commission—Messrs MacMillan, Sherwood, and Sir Josiah Stamp—had to probo was whether that state had been or was about to be readied. Tho British Government itself indicated some months .ago that such a point had boon reached, temporarily at least; otherwise it would rot have granted the industry a subsidy out of State finances already badly strained. On the other hand, the granting of that subsidy—unless it was tho outcome of sheer panic ip an attempt to merely postpone a groat industrial upheaval—argued the Government’s belief that peculiarly adverse conditions are for tbe most part temporary, and that with their improvement the need for the subsidy will pass. The Commission states in its report that tho problem is twofold, having a permanent aspect and a temporary aspect. Whether tho temporary aspect justified the granting of the subsidy last July is a question which the Commission significantly declines to answer. But it is emphatic on the point that such an experiment must end as soon as possible, and must never be repeated. Such a conclusion cannot he regarded as other than sound and authoritative. Tho principle of making one of tho leading industries of the country a burden on tho others is one that is economically indefensible. An extension of it would bo claimed in .all kinds of quarters, and if granted would undermine the basis of the community and bring about chaos. It may be taken for granted that after May the coal industry will bo required to stand on its own bottom, and will have to work out its own salvation, perhaps with legislative and administrative help from the Government, but without further making good of its losses out of tho Treasury.

Coni mining differs from manufacture in tho vital respect tiiat, other things being equal, production becomes increasingly difficult and expensive. As the upper scams become exhausted there is a tendency for it to cost more and more to work tho lower measures, and to-day it is necessary to spend on the sinking and equipment of a modern pit many times tho amount required in the early days of the industry. Though improved methods may be developed, they are offset in greater or less degree by natural forces. From the conflict of evidence beard by tho Commission there seems to emerge tho fact that the British coal mining industry, compared with that of Continental countries, shows a higher average of efficiency when tested by the output per man per shift, the number of accidents, tho rate of mortality, and wages of labor. Since 1913 about £70,000,000 of new capital has beeu put into the industry, the output of coal-cutting machines and the horse-power of electric motors in use has more than doubled, and the number of conveyors has more than trebled. Yet the cost of production has since then quite outdistanced the pre-war rate of increase. The witnesses for the Institution of Mining Engineers declared that it was owing mainly to recently-imposed inelastic, onerous conditions, in particular to a uniform reduction of actual working time per ‘Shift, that the working costs of coal mining in Britain had been so raised. They denied that the industry was carried on with insufficient technical skill in comparison with other industries.

Both' the mine owners and the mining engineers were adamant on tho point that it was the reduction of the working hours that has brought the industry to its present pass. The Commission is very plainly of opinion that hours should not be lengthened. It recognises the imperative need for lower costs of production, and recommends as one method the reduction of wages. Knowing how sot the miners and their representatives are against any lowering of wages, the Commission realises the possibility of their seeking to maintain their weekly earnings by working longer time for the same money; nevertheless, it strongly discountenances any such compromise, no reasons yet being quotable for such a rigid attitude. The amount of the reduction of wages is not a question on which the Commission makes any recommendation, leaving this to be determined by national wage agreements to bo made by conferences of owners and miners. The possibility even of holding such conferences, let alone of their being productive of working agreements, is tho crux of the whole matter. The repeatedly-expressed determination of the Miners’ Federation, both before the Commission and elsewhere, is not to even consider any wage reductions. Tho finding of the Commission on this head will be quite as unpalatable as the rejection of tho federation’s proposal- to nationalise the mines and the Commission’s adherence to tho principle of private enterprise, though modified by the provision that tho State §hould become the actual owner of the coal deposits. Exactly to what extent this should he pursued is not yet perfectly clear. But it appears as though it were contemplated that the State should purchase those deposits being worked ai well as assume tho ownership of those yet to be worked or discovered. This would remove the grievance of the miners in respect of royal-

ties. But at what cost to the nation? The outstanding proposals for reorganisation of tho industry involve tho creation of two administrative bodies—(l) a Coal Commission to acquire and administer on behalf of the State—but not to work—mineral deposits; and (3) a National Fuel and Power Committee to find new methods of winning and utilising coal, under the latter head being suggestions as to low-temperature carbonisation and the generation of electric power from coal, possibly at tho pithead, and its distribution throughout the country. The advantages that may develop on these lines may bo great. Tho Commission’s report states: “ Wo are firmly convinced that if the present difficulties are wisely handled the raining industry, with tho aid of science, will certainly recover and even surpass its former prosperity.” But the difficulty is to handle the present difficulties wisely—to convince both owners and miners to see further than the present, with the wages and hours conflict obscuring the future. Both parties will have to realise that they have stood still and injured themselves instead of getting together to improve methods of production and teach the world at large now and better and cheaper methods of using British coal. This report should bo accepted by both parties as a friendly warning. If it is not heeded it will (according to dispassionate authorities) be only a matter of time before tho present troubles of the industry will bo as nothing to tho calamities that will befall it.