POINT OF VIEW OF THE MINERS.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XLIV, Issue 14041, 26 April 1920, Page 7

POINT OF VIEW OF THE MINERS.

(By* Yenion Hartshorn, M.P., the Leader.)

Years of industrial conflict between the miners and the? coalovvners have brought into existence a direct conflict in the mentality of those two sections. ] t was an inevitable change. It- has been somewhat delayed simply because time was necessary to develop the full self-consciousness of the miners themselves as to the extent of their industrial and economic power.

The weakness of private enterprise in the control of an industry of euch social value as the mining industry is that it does not provide any sense of a common social purpose between the employers and the employed. To- the miners the individual coalowuers represent no other interests than their own desire to make a. personal profit out of the labor of the men employed in the mines. As long as\he miners were unorganised the social issue did not really arise, the power of the private owners being so strong that the attention of the miner was concentrated on his wage interests alone. . . It was to defend their own individual and collective interests that the miners first turned their attention to the building up of a powerful trade union for the purpose of improving their own wage and working conditions. It is by the use of that organisation, an many a wage struggle with the owners, that the miners have awakened to- a. sense of their industrial and economic power as a factor in the establishment of a new social system. The results of these struggles have given them an insight into the value of their labor as a controlling mfiuence over the mines as a vast social industry, and the investigatio'ns which it has been necessary for their trade union to make into the financial and economic conditions of the industry itself have given them a clear idea of the essential factors of control and of the social purposes that the industry might be made to serve. . . Apart from that, the industrial struggle has made a sense of antagonism towards the private employer an ingrained and hereditary quality m the mind of the miners. To them the private investor in the mining industry is anintruder, setting his private a barrier between the miners and the generarcommunitv. The struggle has placed him in the position as an antagonist of the. woikeis, and not .m essential factor in co-opeiation loi tlie communal well-being This new mentality, this new knowledge and sense of power, has. given the mmei a feeling of independence and of socfal power which makes him ask him«elf why the workers in the industry, both manual and non- . manual", should be relegated to the position of mcie cyphers in the management and contiol of an industry in which their working lives are spent and of which thev have an expert knowledge They have acquned a new selfrespect Having secured consideiable control through their trade unions in the fixing and regulation of wages, the> now ask themselves why they should not share control. in the management of the mdustrv » They ask that not only shall they be associated with the management ot the industry because of their peculiar economic and industrial power, but that they shall be associated with it for the'purposes of an end which will commend itseli to the type of mind which has built up trade unionism. Between the owners and the men there is now no common ground for a common social policv To the miner, -the private owner is but an isolated individual, looking after his own individual interests He is the economic opposite of the wage or salary earner, the natural enemy, and there is now no power on earth that can alter this fixed attitude of mind on the part of the workci There is no room for common action, because there is no common gurpose The miner knoivs that his power of combination has taken all real powei out of the hands the the private owner 'He is not the master, the practical dictator, of the old da>s He cannot dibmiss workmen as ho likes, he cannot ~even manage his colliery without regard to the views of the Miners Federation. The private owner nas, in fact, for most purposes of real eontiol, become obsolete, in the ,_ mining

industi\. He ■standi foi a sjstem that is out or date The pow ei tnat he ioimerly wielded is to-daj lai-gelj in the hands oi the mmeis tlnougu tne Aim- | tra' Federation The time is Iherefoie upe when die powei which the workeie exeiciscd indiiecth, and onh paihally acknowledged; thiough the Mmeis l'edeiation. should now be dnecth used and freely acknowledged and built up mtj the stiuctuie ot management It is heie that the social outlook o the miners becomes of vital nationa' impoitance The substantial powei ot contiol which they now cxeieiso cannot be taken aw .rs It will, m tact be come stiongei and sirongei, w nether nationalisation is established now or not Without nationalisation it w ill be a powei wielded bj the imncis as a class apait, and the\ will be deliberated shut off b\ the community itself from loirnng up their power with an organised social effort in the toim ot a definite scheme in which public interests will bo dutl\ leptesented . In such an event the onlj chang.would be that the powei of contiol would pass floin the ovwieis to the workmen, instead of the woikmen's specialised knowledge ot the industi\ being linked up in a national oiganisation which would ci\o the industry the broadest possible social puipose We are at the palling ot the ways The woikmen stand tor the moment picpaied to shaie then power with the community at Luge, prepaied to join with the non-manual woikers. the technical 'expeits and skilled managers, and the State, in a combined eftoit to develop the mdiisti\. which has hitheito been denoted to pnvate and uidividahstic purposes to the broadest and best social uses Which choice will the country toice on them? Generations of close contact with the owners, yeais and yeais of struggle with them, checking then desire tor dividends at the expense ot cbe woiking community and the publit have coin meed the woikers that the pnvate ownei sencs no indispensable puipo'-o, that what leal power ol control he did possess has now hugely parsed awa-s, and fh.it to-da\ he is a hindiancc to the scicntihi oiganisation of the industrj on national lines and for the weltaie. ot the community as a whole The countij now has the chance ol using to its o.vn advantage the social idealism oi the mineis, and their knowledge of the practical pioblems of the industrv If the countiy leiects this oppoitumtj, the miners must puisue their own "objects in then own way.