STRIKE LOSSES.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 12772, 25 May 1912, Page 1 (Supplement)

STRIKE LOSSES.

ESTIMATED >AT FIFTY MILLIONS STERLING. SERIOUS TIME-WASTE. LONDON, April 14. Mr John Holt Schooling gives some remarkable figures as to the loss caused by the miners' strike m an article which he contributes, to' the Daily Telegraph. When, next year' the Board of Trade publishes its annual Buff Book on strikes and lockouts, the coal strike of February, March, and April, 1912 (writes Mr Schooling) takes a leading place iri the list of the great labor disputes that have m this country. During the last twerity years the big trade dispute's^ each involving a time-waste of oyer, -five million working days, have been as follows : — Time-waste. Year. Industry. Days. 1892.— Cotton spihriers, etc. 6,000,000 1893.-^Coal miners .... ... 21,000,000 1894.— C0al miners ... ... 6,000,000 1897.— Engineers -■ ... ... 7,000,000 1898.— Coal miners; ... ...12,000,000 1911.— Railwayman ... Not yet known 1912. — Coal miners, estimated at ' ...25,000,000 The above estimate of the tune- waste of the recent- coal strike is probably too low. And it relates 5 only to the miners, not to other workers who have been thrown out of '.employment by the struggle. The -miners themselves have probably suffered a loss of wages amounting to not less than £6,000,000. Arid their accumulated funds m the Miners' Federation, plus the personal savings of the miners, must have been depleted, at a' moderate estimate; by perhaps „2,ooCfiooO. more. During the last 17 years, and riot including. the recent strike, the time-waste of mining disputes has been more than sixty mil- j lioii working days, or at 300 working i days to . the year, over 200,000 workirig years ; a period more than one_ hundred times as long as the: Christian era. The loss m wages alone to these miners during* the 17 .years, »not including their loss iri connection: with the recent strike, has been, approximately, £15,000,000. Nearly £1,000,000; per year, on the average. That is. -a: large price to pay, directly for the' privilege of striking work. - '■'.'..'•'''■>.

CONTRACTS DIVERTED. ■ . One of the serious looses, from the point of view of national -welfare, has arisen from the' necessity to refuse contracts and, engineering coming from abroad, owing to ; our manufacturers' inability to guarantee delivery of the goods at a stated date. Various instances of such losses have ' been mentioned/but no one can say what is the aggregate amount, Moreover, loss' of this kind j involving the, : refusal, of foreign contracts -by our manufacturers, is, perhaps, thA most injurious of all, because it causes a loss of . future com tracts, fhere is probably nothing more injurious to a \ country's manufacturing and. productive industries than a condition of uncertainty^ of instability, as regards, its power for regular and sustained' production. That injurious condition has forei. good many years been present m this 'country; caused m part by an inability to ensure regular and sustained sales of ; the goods produced. .

THE CAPITALIST AND THE TRADER. If the miners' themselves have lost some £8,000,000 m wages and m saving^, as .they probably have, it is likely that the many men iri all other trades affected by the strike^ have lost a similar sum. As regards, "the. loss of. interest and profit on ' 'capital Jinvested m the coal and other industries of this country it is iriipossibl©' ' to 'form any estimate, but the returns, published by the railway companies', represent only a , small part of the total.; . . Take the case of the shopkeepers, Many of these' were notified by the manufacturers from whom they buy. their goods that, .as railway companies were, restricting their traffic chiefly to articles of food, goods on order and wanted for immediate sale could not be delivered. In one • instance, an outfitter m Surrey- despatched . a , furniture van by road to collect .goods awaiting him at Liverpool anftat Nottingham. The coal Worries goings' through the; poorer districts with niindredweight sacks of coal niarked 3s.6d,in place of : Is or Is 2d, evidenced the; hardship jnfliieted on poor people by a strike not m any .way necessary or justified, and due to the ignorance and folly— to use the mildest words — of the few men who: conspired to bring it about.. ' Some of the items of loss which ,it L . has been possible to estimate are asj follows ; —

Direqt losses to /miners :— Wages *'" ' :.. -'v:,. ... £6,000,000 Trade funds and personal / savings „•.;, ... 2,000,000 Direct losses to- ' workers other than miners ... ,8,000,000 Loss m coal production. . . 10,0Q0,000 Loss m production m industries other' than coal 10,000,000 y Jyzz 7 .. £36,000/)oo This estimated total loss of £36,000,000 omits various items already mentioned ■that -cannot even' be estimated. It is quite likely that if .; all could be traced and measured^ the total loss would be somewhere near £50,000,000.