MONOPOLY OF COAL.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LVI, Issue 17253, 1 September 1919, Page 8

MONOPOLY OF COAL.

"CORNER" CREATED BY MINERS

The control of the coal supplies in Britain was discussed recently by Lord Monkswell in a letter to the Times. " The commissioners who represent the miners are laying great stress upon the fact that mineral rights are held by private persons who, they feilege, might hold the country ,to ransom bv refusing to j allow minerals to be worked," he wrote. j "It is a perfectly fair point to make" j though little more than a theoretical one But the monopoly held by the Miners' Federation is a much more eerioue affair To put it quite baldly, the federation, who are responsible to no one but them- ' selves, have cornered the whole business of coal production in the United Kino-. ' dom, and they not only can theoretically but sometimes do actually put pressure upon the State by means of the monopoly which they have secured. Bv all means* lei the commission tell us how we maybest avoid the dangers, if an which arise from private property in minerals". But let them not omit to tell us also how to avert the menace to the authority of the sovereign democracy due to the corner created by the Miners' Federation, i