THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 1926. STILL UNSETTLED.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19905, 27 September 1926, Page 8

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 1926. STILL UNSETTLED.

Week after week slips away without any settlement of the coal miners’ strike in Great Britain. The hopes that were entertained that a basis would be arrived at last week upon which a settlement might be effected have not been realised. Mr A. J Cook, the secretary of the Miners’ Federation, is filled once more with resentment towards the Prime Minister, whom he accuses, with no apparent justification, of being influenced by partiality for the mine-owners, and a Liberal newspaper gloomily foresees a fight to the last ditch. A fight of that description could result only in the defeat and humiliation of the miners through the exhaustion of their resources, and such a teimination of the strike could not, upon the most favourable view of it, be regarded as satisfactory, for it would simply mean that the miners were forced back to work until such time as they were prepared for another struggle. There have been some remarkable features about the strike. One of them has been that we have heard singularly little concerning the effect of the strike upon British industry in general. The trade of the nation must have been very gravely affected through a shortage in the supplies of coal, for it cannot be supposed that the importations have more than partially sufficed for the ordinary requirements of industry, and a great many factories must have been temporarily closed down in consequence. In one way and another, the strike must have cost the nation many millions of money apart altogether from the losses suffered by mine-owners through the inactivity in their industry and the losses suffered by the miners in their being deprived of their wages. The loyalty of the miners to leadership which has been roundly condemned by persons like Mr J. H. Thomas and Mr Frank Hodges, who are prominent in the Labour movement, has been another noteworthy feature of the strike. Yet another, which affords cause for a good deal of national pride, has been the respect for the law that has been, shown by the miners. Mr Cook and a few other firebrands have spoken very wildly and provocatively on many occasions during the strike, but, as far as we have heard, the conduct of the miners has generally been beyond reproach during the whole of the time for which they have been out of work. It is possible that the economic pressure to which they have been subjected has been Jess severe than is generally imagined. “Never in any industrial dispute in this country,” an English paper said lately, “or, for that matter, in the United States or elsewhere, have such complete measures been taken to alleviate distress. The cost is proving high, is amounting, in Poor Law relief alone, to upwards of a quarter of a million pounds a week; but the money is not begrudged. It has never been the policy of the Government or of the coalowners or of the nation to starve the miners into surrender.” Otherwise, the strike could not have lasted, as it has done, for twenty-one weeks. It is proving an extremely costly business, and for this reason it is all the more desirable that a settlement should be effected of a kind that contained in it the elements of permanence.