THE FOOD OF INDUSTRY.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLIII, Issue 222, 16 September 1909, Page 6

THE FOOD OF INDUSTRY.

WHAT A COAL STRIKE WOULD MEAN TO GREAT BRITAIN.

Great Britain was threatened a few weeks ago with almost^ the greatest commercial disaster it is possible to imagine. Had the threatened war between the coal mines owners and the miners actually broken out there is hardly a single industry in the country which would not have been brought to a complete standstill within a very few days. The British are a commercial manufacturing, industrial nation, and coal is the very life of our industries. It is as important as the food of industry as is our wheat supply as the food of the people. Indeed, it is doubtful if coal is not the more important to the nation of the two. We are fed with wheat by the foreigners (says a writer in a London paper), and our wheat bill is paid with the products of our industries. Stop the industries,, and the wherewithal to pay for our wheat vanishes. Coal is part of the national wealth. We do not have to import it as we do most of the other raw materials we use. It is to be had for the digging, and this fact has gone far to make Great Britain the foremost nation of the world. The yearly output from the mines of Great Britain now reachas. the enormous total of 260,----000,000 tons—last year it. was 261,512,214. Of this we exported 62,547,175 tons; w&shipped 19,474,174 tons for the use of steamships, and the rest, amounting to 179,550,865, remained for otir own.use. A miner's working week, taking the year round and averaging it over the whole of the 900,000 workers employed in the coal mines of Great Britain, is mot more than five days, and the average daily output is but a little more than 900,000 tons., Although it is impossible ,-to- obtain exact figures, the export estimate is that^ there are never more / than. between 7,000,000 and &,<X)tt,ooo' tens of boal on sale..^t, the mine banks at one time. In other words, there is no such thing as coal storage, the demand and supply running within a fortnight of; each other at the outside. . i

A national strike^ would mean the complete stoppage of the supply; and within a fortnight at the normal demand the supply would be exhausted. Of course ■, efforts would be made to economise in the use of coal, and the great and wealthy industries would be ready to pay enormous prices in order to increase their store, but within a month, at the most, they would find their stocks exhausted and everything would be at a standstill. The strike would have begun, if a settlement had not been effected, on September Ist, and by the end of October the country would be without coal.

The first to suffer would be the domestic consumer. From the beginning of the strike prices would rise, getting higher and higher every clay as railways, factories, iron and steel works and other great industries bid against each other for the precious fuel.

A, \jeekwoiild see the price abso-lutely"-prohibitive to the poor man, and a fortnight would make coal a dear luxury for the rich man. Before' the month elapsed practically every one of the 9,000,000 homes in Britain would have been without fires, and this just at the beginning of the winter, when a fire becomes one of the prime necessities of life. "Ah!" I can hear some housewives say,! "but lam aIL right. I don't use coal. I use gas or electricity, both for cooking and •heating." A moment's thought, however, will show them that their superiority is only fancied. With the end of the coal supply will come the end of both gas and electricity, for coal is the source of both. '

Here again another necessity of civilised life will have vanished. There will be no lighting either off streets or houses. Shops will have to close as the sun goes down, the theatres will not be aWe ■to open, while the^ police will be-powerless to deal jyith' the marauding.of the criminal classes, who are always ready to take advantage' of such an opportunity for crime.

But these things are not the worst. All the great towns where the people live "together by the hundreds of thousands will soon be starving, for the railways which bring them thousands of tons of food every, day will be silent.

Without coal trains cannot, run. Every year the fifteen great railway companies of Great Britain use over 13,000,000 tons of coal. Take one great line alone, the London and North-Western. Its yearly coal bill reaches over 1,000,000 tons, equal to a quarter of its yearly wage bill. Coal is the life of the railway, and without it all the gigantic organisations, all the mighty army of workmen—porters, guards, engine-drivers, and platelayers—will be rendered as inoperative as an army of soldiers without ammunition.

Thus the condition of the town dweller would be parlous indeed. No fire, no light, and little food. Life would be almost impossible, for there would be no work, and hence little money. It is practically impossible to name an industry concerned with the making of anything, which has not to depend absolutely on coal. Factories would have to close, workshops would find themselves without , materials, iron and steel furnaces would become cold, tram-cars would stop, newspapers could not be printed; in fact, whichever way one looks a coal strike wouid mean disaster as complete as though the country had been overrun by pestilence or destroyed by an earthquake.

Therefore it is that a national coal strike of which the miners' leaders talk so glibly and for which the miners have voted so lightly is unthinkable, and must not happen at any cost. This is no matter of a fight between a section of labor and a section of capital on which the rest of the community can look with, equanimity. It is a vital question in which everyone is concerned. Coal owners and coal miners may be fighting for what they consider to be vital principles; but they must be given to understand that whatever differences they may have must be settled without recourse to anything so terrible from every point of view as a national coal strike.