THE PRICE OF STRIFE.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXXIII, Issue 15899, 10 April 1912, Page 8

THE PRICE OF STRIFE.

The cost of the coalminers’ strike cannot be expressed fully in terms of money, since the bald figures of the statistician do not take count of human suffering, wrecked homes and wasted lives. But the statement that the loss suffered by the community since the miners threw down their tools has amounted to £50,000,000 is an impressive indictment of the system that made the conflict possible. The workers of Britain, we are told in a cablegram, have lost £16,000,000 in wages, trade union *funds and personal savings, while production has been diminished by £20,000,000. Sane people must wonder why the nation has been forced to pay this price for the settlement of a dispute that would never have arisen had the masters and the men met one another in a conciliatory spirit, with a determination to be fair and honest in their dealings with their fellowmeu. But at the same time the statesmen will have to, admit, in their search for a remedy for industrial unrest, that the miners have been taught in a hard school to regard the class struggle as offering them their only hope of salvation. The infantile death-rate in the mining districts of Wales rises as high as 193 per 1000, and the cause of this holocaust of child life is the appalling housing system. Many of the miners live in wretched hovels, lacking any effective provision for sanitation, under conditions of overcrowding ttfat simply breed disease and vice. They can find no better homes because the landowners who are drawing royalties from the mines will not spend money on new buildings, while the mineowners, speaking generally, are utterly careless regarding the welfare of their employees. Mr Vernon Hartshorn, who is reported to have said that the British transport workers will strike this year, comes from the neighbourhood of Maesteg, where it is no uncommon thing for a dozen, people, men, women and children, to live in a two-roomed cottage, for which an extortionate rent is charged. As long as -these conditions are permitted to endure the miners cannot bo expected to trouble themselves very much about the loss that their demand for a larger share of the good things of life may inflict upon the nation.