BRITISH COAL TROUBLE.

Evening Star, Issue 19272, 10 June 1926, Page 6

BRITISH COAL TROUBLE.

Angbv recrimination terminated the latest meeting of the representatives of the British coal mine owners and the miners, the climax being the latter’s charge that the former had falsified the facts and figures as to the industry’s economic ability to pay the present wages. It is probable that in one sense this charge is only too well founded, though in another sense falsification may not strictly apply. The conditions need to be explained, and there is an extremely well-informed article in an English paper of high standing, which appeared a week before the fateful first of May, setting forth the conditions. This stated that the British coal industry, far from being moribund, is probably on the eve of as great and profitable a boom as it had ever known. In Lancashire most of the pits are about worked out; but in Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Notts, and Lincolnshire the development of profitable seams has been going on apace, deep and very rich seams being tapped by modern methods. In some of these pits the miners are (or were prior to the strike) being paid £1 per shift, and as the miners were easily hewing fire tons a day, as against 15cwt in the Lancashire pits, the owners have been reaping handsome profits. The writer of the article states that “many of the more successful coal concerns have already seceded from the Coal Owners’ Federation, which represents nowadays for the most part those owners whose mines ought, from an economic point of view, to he closed down.” The public therefore has a right to know whom exactly the negotiators for the mine owners represent—the owners of the played-out pits only, or the mine owners as a whole. If the former, then probably the figures have not been falsified. But it is patently absurd to take as a basis the financial aspect of concerns which economically have no right w itever fo continue in existence. In ; less aggravated form the same experience has befallen New Zealand in respect of flour milling. Because of combination some out-of-date mills have been kept going which under free competition would have had to leave the field to their more modern rivals; and unfortunately the price of flour has not been based on the lower cost of production of the up-to-dato concerns. We road, in the article above referred to: “ The Mine Owners’ Association is a most foolish and incompetent body, with which the more successful coal-mining concerns will have nothing to do. In no sense does it represent the industry as a whole; it merely wants more subsidies and lower wages in order to keep alive pits which, either because they are so badly managed or because the seams have run out, cannot offer a living wage. Roughly speaking, a third of the coal mines of Great Britain are so profitable that they care little what wages they pay; another third can pay decent wages, and keep their heads well above water; the remaining third cannot pay a living wage at all without a subsidy, and ought to be abandoned.” If this is a true roflox of the position no one can maintain that the present deadlock is due to perversity and greed on the part of the miners. That they are far more near the end of their financial resources than at the limit of the moral qualities behind their resolve not to accept lower wages or longer hours is evident from the appeal for funds just received in New Zealand.