WORLD COAL TRADE

Grey River Argus, 1 July 1925, Page 7

WORLD COAL TRADE

NEEDS REGULATION. markets glutted. LONDON,, May 14. Increasing over-production, hand in hand with decreasing coal prices—that is the situation in the coal industry in practically all nations. Coal ‘trouble” in several nations—Britain and Belgium especially—may be expected this summer, and it will affect for a time other coal producers, such as the United States. These are the characteristics of the world reports recently considered by the International Miners ’ Federation meeting in Brussels and of a survey*, of coal published by the International Federation of Trade Unions (Amsterdam). The facts make the world's coal magnates look like fools or so hapless as to suggest it is time for a different control of the coal industries in each nation. Perhaps that is why the miners’ meeting called for a world investigation of coal by the Geneva International Labour Office and why the coal operators are opposing it. The tacts will discredit the present competitive coal system. GOAL CONDITIONS .N bIHTAJ.X. Coal over-production lias become startlingly great. Britain is almost the only country where output per miner is not increasing (it is 17 hundred weight per man per day, as against 20 hundred weight in 1913). Bad mine organisation and the’ great age of the mines leaves British production pvr man a little over one-fifth of that of the United States; and yet Britain right now has four months’ stock above ground (since the owners fear a strike). Germany, Frame, the Saar Basin, Belgium. Holland, Czechoslovakia, South Africa. British India I and the I .S.A. all exceed their prewar production. As each country’s magnates go scrambling round to get rid of the glut of coal, they are raising one cry. “We must meet foreign competition—miners’ wages must come down—miners’ hours must be lengthened.” The British miners’ seven-hour day is threatened, just as the German miners have mostly lost their legal seven-hour day, while the United States miners do not even move to get a seven-hour day: the bosses all want to lengthen hours—

; to get up more coal—as a remedy for I a coal slump due to too much coal. The bosses’ other remedy—wage cuts —is equally idiotic. Wage cuts in one country promptly beget wage cuts in the rival country, “and there you are’’ —just where they are now—in the soup. GERMANY SHIPPING COAL. Of course, the only beginning of a remedy can be an international survey, to get out the facts —facts which will by their general acceptance end the “vicious circle” game of wage cuts and lengthening hours. Another step toward ending coal demoralisation would be to control or change the political arrangements, which are responsible for some of the present demoralisation. The worst of these ,-i rahgements is the imposition of reparations—especially coal—on the war losers. Before the war Germany used to import coal heavily from other countries,' especially Britain; and before the “Dawes Flan” as late as 1923, Germany imported 67 per cent more coal from Britain than she did in 1913. ■'ow all that has changed. German coal, produced under lengthened hours and lower wages, due primarily to the Franco-British policy of reparations, lias made Germany primarily a coal-

selling nation and other countries find they have cut their own coal throats. United States coal is now practically shut out of Europe, except in Italy, where it has ousted British coal, but that market is now going to Germany. Belgium is losing even her home coal market; the Pc/t of Antwerp, Belgium, places its coal orders in Germany! And Belgium right now faces a general strike of all her coal miners! German cheap coal is even taking the Greek market from Britain’s ( heap sea-borne coal. INTERNATIONAL ACTiON NEEDED. The whole thing is chaos, helped on by the reparations policy, which simply does no good to coal miners anywhere. While the International Labor Office, on the demands of the International Miners’ Federation (of which the United Mine Workers is a part) may undertake a world coal inquiry sometime of other, the world’s coal unionists listened attentively to no less conservative a leader than Herbeit Smith, president of the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain, for International action” to stop the game of wage cuts and lengthened hours. International action” of this sort means general strikes, or, at least, boycotts of foreign markets. Smith gave point to his demand by urging that there should be a general strike of British miners and British engineers (machinists) to meet the British bosses’ demands. Coming from so old and steady a union leader, the suggestion has created a great stir in Britain.