COAL PROFITS AND WAGES.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XLVII, Issue XLVII, 13 March 1912, Page 5

COAL PROFITS AND WAGES.

MINERS' PLEA FOR A LARGER SHARE. Some interesting calculations on the relation between dividends and wages are contained in a pamphlet "Prolits and Wages in the Coal Trade," by Mr Tom Richardson, M.P., and Mr Arthur Walbank, F.C.A., which was published i:i England recently. Reviewing the pamphlet in the "Daily Mail," Mr Chas. .Duguid, the well-known financial writer, says : ror the purposes of statistical comparison Uic oasis interest on capital is taken as 6 per cent., and the basis wage as 19s per weeK. It is calculated tiiat, taKiug the period from lb9B to 1911), the wages average 4£> per cent, above the basis, while tne ordinary dividend averages 220 per cent, over its basis. It may be remarked, however, in passing, that while it is admitted in the pamplilet that the basis wage is that of tixe highest-paid class of labour, the basis for the screener being only 14s per week, a basis of 3 per cent, in tile case of coal mining investments seems ridiculous. The -*ery highest cla6s securities yield more than that. If coal mining investments never yielded more than .i per cent, capital would hold aloof, the industry would not exist, and there would be no wages at all. • The pamphlet gives interesting figures regarding two or three individual companies. It is shown, for instance, that the Pearson and Knowles Cpal Compa.ny employs 9447 men, to whom it pays £631,000, and that the shareholders number 1160, and receive £39,086 in dividend. This means about £67 a year for each workman and about £34 for each shareholder. The writers of the pamphlet, by counting the total prolits instead of the profits distributed to the shareholders, make out that the profit for the year for each shareholder is about £69; that rather more goes, therefore, to the shareholder than to the miner. In the case- of the Broomhill Collieries the chairman stated that for the year the miner had had the lion's share,l for out of every realised sovereign he had received Is 8d more than in the previous twelve-month, while capital had received less. The writers of the pamphlet retort that the chairman did not mention the amounts put to reserve for the benefit of the shareholders in that year, and in preceding years, and then add that "it must not be forgotten that the average dividend paid on the ordinary shares for the ten years to 191,0 is per cent, after allowing for the fact that no dividends whatever were paid on these shares in 1903, 1904, 1905, 1906, and 1910."