BRITISH MINERS MURDERED

Maoriland Worker, Volume 12, Issue 295, 25 October 1922, Page 5

BRITISH MINERS MURDERED

For the Profit of a Foreip Tryst ■■■■. . ■

That the peoples are but pawns In the great Capitalist game is proved by the story of Shale Oil in the Lothians, says Scots "JForward."

Scots shale oil was good oil. It hafl a high flash point (100 degrees), whereas American oil had a flash point at 73 degrees. That is to any It ignited or exploded at 73 degrees.' In 1879 the American oil Interests "induced" the British Government] of the day to lower the degree at| which oil could be sold Iα Britain, and private consumers were allowed to purchase 'the inferior American stuff which gives oil an inflammable gas at a temperature of 73 • degrees. Tho Government continued to insist upon a flash point oil of 105 degrees for the Navy and 145 degrees for ltd lighthouses, but the 73 degree stuff could be used in private industry. The Scottish Oil Companies had private financial arrangements with the Yankee exporters and were "precluded" from protesting", so declared Mr. T. Graham Young, son of the founder of. the Scottish oil industry in the "Glasgow Herald," 12th May, 1894. The absurdity of allowing a 73 degree oil to be used in this country should have been clear when H was made known that in one year (1893) there were, no fewer than 60 flays In London during which the temperature rose above 73 degrees, In other words GO days in which the gas would explode. But Big Business cared notntfigr.

"At the December, 1802, meeting of the Society of Chemical Industry of Great Britain, it was declared that about 300 deaths a year Occurred in EngZan.l and Wales from lamp accidents due to the explosiveness of American oil sold under this reduction of the test." .

Yet the great foreign Oil Trust had the power to compel a British Capitalist Government to -do its bidding. In 1892 the Scottish oil companies were ordered by the Yankee Trust to reduce (heir output by 10 per cent., and willy nilly they had to do it throwing men out of work and depreciating the capital value of their own investments by over £1,000,000. Immediately "following (says the "Economist," 8/10/22) a reduction of 10 per cent, took place in Scots shale oil wages. "We cannot tell," says a correspondent of the "Glasgow Herald" at that time, "what powerful interest the American oil combination did not bring - to bear on our Government. Ths public had then no champion, and as a rule never have on these ocasions."

The control of oil, the ownership of oilfields, the profits fr&m oil, that is real politics, and until- the peoples take oil from private ownership, and ration it out as a great world need, at a unifoi-m,price, there will be Jwar and intrigue for war: there will be armaments and diplomats, secret treaties, poison gases—and "poverty and worry will abide With us.

Away with Capitalist ownership and monopoly of a world need! Bring oil under public onlrol —under the control of the League of Nations, If you like, but at all costs release it from the control of the great international money sharks.