NATIONALISATION

Otago Witness, Issue 3415, 29 August 1919, Page 59

NATIONALISATION

AND THE COMMUNISTIC COALSCUTTLE. (The Spectator, June 28.) The reports of the Coal Commission are before the public. They will not be able to be buried like the reports of so many commissions. There are too many grim spectres at the door to allow of this comfortable form of disposal, spectres that will insist on the matter being settled one way or another—the spectre of a coal famine, the spectre of labour .trouble in an essential industry, the spectre of monopoly and privilege on a scale hitherto unknown in this country. We are not going to dissect in detail the four reports of the commission. It will not be on the advice given by any of them that the matter will be settled. It will be settled by a tug-of-war between opposing interests; the interests of the nation—i.e., of the consumers of all kinds—and the interests or supposed interests of the coal miners. That the Government will give a true lead is, alasl most unlikely. They will use strong words, and plenty of them, but we may be sure that they have made up their minds, consciously or unconsciously, to shout with whichever turns out-to be the. biggest or the strongest crowd. They, or some of them, may have private views on the subject of nationalisation, but those views, whether for or against, will be governed by the old formula: "These are our principles, but if they don't suit, why, they can be changed." ~.-... t We prefer, then, to deal with the essentials of the subject rather than to plod through the chairman's wellrmeant efforts to find a formula of the usual political formula that is intended not so much to solve the question as to shelve the difficulties. Such formulas are devised not to create a foundation for clean-cut and clear action, but to. form a cloud of words which will hide the difficulties for the moment, and which will win assent, even if a transient and embarrassed assent, from as many people as possible. If you want to get the greatest agreement of the greatest number the important thing'is to be vague and woolly. People more easily give approval to things which they half understand, or which are capable of a variety of meanings, than to things which are plain and perfectly clear. A straight statement is sure to hit someone in the ribsi- No one is necessarily injured by a shower of verbal soap-suds. Which, then, is it to be? Are we to have nationalisation or individual trading in the coal industry? A?e we to go on with the present system,\ modified, it may be, in certain particulars, but essentially a system governed by the principles of free exchange, or are we to make coal a State monopoly? ... ' ', sThe answer that must be given to the question of nationalisation or no nationalisation depends upon that given to another question. Which is the system that will better secure the safety and welfare of the nation? Which /system will do the two things necessary for our industrial salvation —give us coal at the cheapest practicable rate and in' the greatest quantities, and at the same time provide for those who practise an admittedly dangerous and arduous trade high wages and conditions so good as to reconcile them to toil beneath the earth away from the light of the sun? At first sight it may seem as if the two ideals expressed in this question are incompatible, as if cheap coal and plenty of it must be inconsistent with increased remuneration and easier conditions for the miners. Are not that greater production which we have now come to see* is the only thing that stands between us and economic rum, and a better time for the miners, an impossibility ? ; In other words, are we not "up against" the great antinomy of economics in its clearest and strongest shape? How are we going to achieve the two incompatibles ? Who can speak the word that will-reconcile consumer and producer? The answer is: Organise the mining industry in such a way that the product but not the price shall go up, and that the remuneration of the miner,, though actually higher than before, shall be relatively a lesser and not a ereater element in the cost of winning the coal. Economically the problem is here seen to turn upon the question of waste. Can the waste in the true economic sense —production not by the best and cheapest methods and by the employment of every device of machinery and science, but by unnecessarily dear and ineffective methods be so much reduced that there will be

a larger and a cheaper output, results / which are from this point of view the same thing? For. practical purposes, then, what we have got to consider in to the question of nationalisation is this: Will nationalisation provide us with a method of so largely decreasing the waste in the coal industry that we shall be able to get an increased production and at the same time improve the wages and conditions of the miners? All depends upon that. _ If we can honestly answer the question "Yes," then in heaven's name let us nationalise the coal industry at once. If the answer is "No," or if it is only a very doubtful "Yes," we dare not adopt nationalisation. The risks would be too great. Consider for a moment what these risks are. The welfare and safety of • every industry in the country indirectly turn upon the question of coal. All require heat and power, and heat and power - in these islands come from coal. At the same time there is, or was, a vast trade in coal as a raw material for export, which is inextricably hound uo with our commercial prosperity. -It is because we can -fill wtih coal the ships that go to fetch goods from foreign parts, and so make both voyages productive, that we are, or rather have hitherto been, able to import so cheaply and profitably the products of the wide world. If we are not able to fiend coal abroad because coal has

risen to a prohibitive price here owing "to the increased cost of production, our national force will be spent. Remember, there is no weapon of defence, even in the tariff reformer's armoury, against the destruction of an export trade. If you want to sell something the only way you can do it. is by producing a cheaper and better article than other people are producing. The one exception <to this rule is a monopoly. But unfortunately we no longer hold any monopoly in coal, or even cheap ooal, as witness the fact that coal in America is actually cheaper to-day than coal in England. . In the last resort, then, we have got to .decide the question of nationalisation, not upon such considerations as the right of the miners to a better time, or the rights of the mine-owners, or of the owners of the coal itself, but upon the much more practical question what svstem will P re ~ vent or reduce economic waste. We have never ourselves liked the idea of nationalisation because we have always dreaded the inefficiency of the "Government stroke," and of industries and avowedly managed not to produce a profit so much as to effect a moral revolution. Nevertheless when the subject was first broached we were inclined to think it might be wise to give the policy of nationalisation a trial, and especially in an industry which may be termed the key industry par excellence—the industry in which every man is concerned in his private capacity of an eater and drinker of food and a person in need of heat. Besides its universality in _ use, there were other reasons for thinking. that State ownership might save waste. The.several thousands of concerns, great and small, which are now winning coal are often very wastefully managed, pay unnecessary salaries, work in unnecessarily watertight compartments, waste coal in barriers, waste power in pumps, sot. to mention the time and money wasted in complicated individual bargains in congested areas. From this welter of private ownerships, small concerns side by side with \iig, and zigzag conditions i generally, it does at first sight seem as if the amalgamator should reap a rich harvest. Especially does this seem the case if the amalgamator were to be the State, already one of the greatest purchasers of coal _ in the country, and a purchaser who, owing to the State control of. transport, can do much to. prevent waste by insisting that the coal won in a particular place - shall be used in the parts adjacent, and that there shall be as. little criss-cross transportation as possible owing to the unreasonable and childish vagaries of individual demand. . , . . We need not, however, go further into the particular reasons which, as we have said, at first induced us to think, if reluctantly, that we ought perhaps to try the great experiment of nationalisation, even if at a considerable risk. The evidence given before the Coal Commission, and the outspoken way in which Mr Smillie and his experts in the affairs of Utopia, and his assessors from the cloud cuckooland of Fabian economics, put their case have convinced us that the peril is far ' too great. With the aid of Mr Smillie's outstretched, if not exactly kindly, hand, we have been led to the very "edge of the precipice, and been allowed the privilege of looking down and seeing exactly the kind of abyss into which the nation must fall if it makes the plunge of nationalisation. That peep into the illimitable inane of the jointminds of Mr Sidney Webb and Sir Chioza Money has been quite enough. Though the abstract arguments for nationalisation may remain, and do remain, as before, we have seen quite clearly the spirit in which it wpuld be worked by its present advocates'. And remember, a principle like that of nationalisation must be worked by those who believe in it if it is to be given anything like a fair chance of success, and not by those who disbelieve in it. But the people who believe in it want it not to increase output, but for certain definite and specific social and political purposes. The first of these is to give the miners the control of the mining industry, even if nominally the control is to be in the hands of the State. The second is to place in their hands an instrument of "direct action" which will enable them to get almost any terms they like from the State. To put it in yet another way, all that we have .heard from the advocates of the nationalisation of the coal industry points to the fact that they want it for ulterior reasons, and not in order to decrease waste, and so to increase production, while at, the same time improving the conditions under which the miners work. - Nationalisation must then be opposed as contrary to the best interests of the nation. When we use the word "opposed" let us be perfectly frank. We do not mean opposition in the sense of opposition to the will of the people, but merely oposition to the will of the Miners' Union or even of organised labour generally. If the people of this country are foolish enough, as we should say, to decide by a majority of votes that the State shall, take over mines and work them, we who oppose nationalisation must, like good citizens, bow to the will of the majority, until of course we can get it changed or modified. We have no intention whatever of claiming the privilege which we see the membei-s of the "Triple Alii ance'' and many other trade unions now claim, of carrying their particular will by what they naively term, "direct action"— i.e., by using the powers of a well-placed and privileged minority to _ coerce the majority and to enforce obedience to the minoritv's orders. • No doubt when things are so nearlv balanced the opposers of nationalisation might take a leaf out of the book of the trade unions and so arrange matters that the will of an anti-nationalisation minority should prevail. We, however, are too good democrats to contemplate or even to desire any such notion. Let the majority decide. When it has done so we will obey its will as loyally as we mean to help to carry out its will when and if it goes our way. We must go further. In

a matter so vitally important as _ that of the nationalisation of the coal industry we hold that there should be a referendum if the status quo is to be revolutionised. A direct vote of the nation as a whole must accept or reject so tremendous _ a project. Every man and every woman is, as we have said, a consumer of coal. Directly or indirectly, coal is bound up with liis or her very life. That being the case, each individual voter has in the matter of coal a special right to say whether he will or will not run the appalling risks of nationalisation. If ever there was a subject for putting an Act of Parliament, after it has been thrashed out in detail, to the people as a community and not by "regions," it is the nationalisation of the coal industry,