THE COAL TRADE.
HOWEVER it may affect one personally, the fact is of great interest that, during the past week or two, at a time of perfect harmony in the mining industry, coal has commanded prices higher than have been reached for many years, except for short periods during serious strikes. Nor can it cause surprise that in some quarters a state of things so remarkable, and to great numbers of people so eminently inconvenient, should be prompting talk of " rings " and "corners," local or even national. Persons interested in the coal trade can hardly resent these suggestions, though they may deny that they rest upon any solid foundation. For it is not so very long since leading coal-owners were more or less openly dis- cussing whether it was not possible to devise means of checking the fierce competition by which prices were kept el a level go low as to preclude the possibility of sub- stantial profits, except to the owners of a small number el comperatively new and advantageously circumstanced pits. Wills that view, only some two or three years ago, suggestions were put forward on high authority for the formation of a national limited liability company of existing coal-owners for the purchase and resale, at prices to be arranged partly by district boards and partly by a central board of the company, of all the coal produced by its members. Among the miners, again, more or less in- fluential voices have been often raised in favour of pro- posals for the limitation of output, a device by which, as it was argued, the prices of coal could be kept up, and the coal - owners deprived of any excuse for demanding the reduction, or refusing the elevation, of wages. The thing was to be managed, if possible, by arrangement with the employers, and supposing that the latter had taken up the ingenious project of combination put forward, as we have just mentioned, on their own side, it might well have happened that some understanding with the men, for a regulation of the amount of coal raised, would be found necessary.
There is, therefore, no a priori reason whatever for
rejecting the idea that the present exalted prices for coal may have been brought about by the adoption and pursuit of a definite policy on the part of those interested in the trade. To cherish such a theory does not involve the imputation to coal-owners and miners of a "double dose of original sin." It simply credits them with a successful resort to methods of what we may call negative co-opera- tion, only designed to secure reasonable remuneration to those engaged in an occupation of a specially anxious and perilous character, which for many years has been some-
what scantily rewarded. While saying this, however, let us hasten to add that, in our judgment, there is hardly any conceivable form of trade and industrial combination which, in practice, would be fraught with so much danger to the public as would a National Coal Trust, A River Trust in India, if such a thing could be imagined, would scarcely have it in its power, or be under temptation, to take steps liable to produce more widespread disaster and misery. Indeed, if there were evidence of the probable, to say nothing of the actual, formation of a national Syndicate for the control of the coal supply in this country, the case for drastic intervention on the part of the State would seem to us overwhelming. But is there evidence to support any such conclusion ? We confess that we are quite unable to discern it, and that the probabilities seem to point in quite another direction. The things needed for the effective operation of a Coal Syndicate might be directed towards, but could not be done in. a "corner." Will any one seriously suggest that if so vast an enter- prise had been on foot for some weeks or months past everybody connected with or invited to participate in it would have been so satisfied with his share in the actual and probable proceeds as to refrain from revealing the whole scheme in the columns of the daily Press ? Again, if the high price of coal and the difficulty of getting needed supplies of fuel at any price, from which the great metal industries have suffered of late, could with any plausibility be attributed to concerted action on the part of the coal-owners, not to speak of the miners, is it not abso- lutely certain that the country would have been ringing with denunciations of the ill-omened and unscrupulous " combine " from those so gravely inconvenienced by its operation ? Nothing of the kind has happened, and in the last number of the Iron and Steel Trades Journal we find it explicitly recognised that the "serious deficiency of fuel," which "undoubtedly" exists, has occurred at a period at which, "in all the mining centres ..... maximum outputs are attained, except where the railways are unable to cope with the traffic." The same authority goes on to say that the deficiency in question "arises not from the inadequate resources of the pits or the insuf- ficiency of the labour to work them, but from the inability of the great carrying companies in the interior of the country to transport the coal from the pit-bank to the consumer. Traffic," it is added, "has become so con- gested that London merchants have in many cases only been able to get their requirements satisfied by outbidding buyers in other parts of the country." This is not said by way of blame to the railway companies. It is recognised that the demand on their resources has been quite extra- ordinary, owing to an exceptional combination of circum- stances. There has been the very large development of general goods traffic, due to the happily almost universal prosperity of our manufacturing industries. There has been the immense demand for coal supplies occasioned by the needs of those industries in general and of those dealing with metals in particular. Further, there has been the special, and very heavy, traffic involved in the conveyance to London and other ports of supplies of all kinds for the troops going to, and already in, South Africa. In the midst of all this vast volume of carrying business there came the Christmas season, with all its normally aggravating influences. What wonder, then, if what in ordinary years is a time of congestion and disor- ganisation of railway traffic, became in 1899-1900 a time of almost abject paralysis, so far as the carriage of minerals was concerned ? So it was, and two or three days before Christmas the railways dropped the attempt to convey coal about the country. The result was, in London— which is only served, to any large extent, by " sea- coal " for industrial purposes—so rapid a depletion of stores that when towards the end of the Christmas week coal-trucks began to reach the Metropolis in large troops, they were all cleared out at once and hurried off in a body back to the collieries. There they arrived in numbers quite incompatible with good working arrangements,—one colliery, it is said, having some two miles of waggons standing outside its pits. Moreover by that time there had been some failure of production, for over a large part of the Midland mining districts, at any rate, the miners practically did no work in Christmas week, glad to take the prolonged playtime after a spell of good work and wages, and also probably thinking that if they sent up coal it would not get away from the collieries. Thus, and into the New Year, the long paralysis of railway carriage arrangements reacted upon, and produced an actual though temporary check in, the supply of coal just when such an occurrence was certain to operate very inconveniently upon an excited market. And it is un- certain how soon the normal rapidity and smoothness of production and conveyance to consumers may be restored, —uncertain, indeed, how soon the supply will quite fully overtake the vast demand. The railways are short not only of waggons, but of men for the handling of the traffics—the Midland alone, it is said, having lost three thousand of its servants by the calling out of the Reservists. The collieries also have lost considerable numbers of their most energetic men, and it has to be borne in mind that the fresh increase in wages lately decreed by the Conciliation Board, and assented to as adequate by a unanimous vote of the Miners' F,deration at Cardiff this week, will in all probability tend to check, rather than increase, production. With working men already making a good wage at a very laborious occupa- tion, an increase in the rate of pay is almost sure, in a large proportion of cases, to lead to a slight diminution in the amount of work done.
In view of all these circumstances, it will, we think, be recognised that to account for the occurrence, and if it should be so, the continuance, of a want of perfect balance between supply and demand in the coal trade, and of un- pleasantly high prices in consequence, it is not necessary to adopt any theory of the existence of a Trust among coal-owners, which is essentially improbable, or even among merchants, in London. The latter, though more readily conceivable, is, we are assured, on authority which seems to us good, not a fact. And though some of the London merchants are doubtless doing a roaring trade and enjoy- ing the situation, there are probably not a few of them who find it quite as inconvenient as their customers. The far-sighted and enterprising gentlemen who bought coal largely on contract some considerable time back, and who have plenty of storage room, and of railway waggons of their own,—these are having a "good time." But those who did not foresee and make arrangements in view of what was coming, are probably suffering substantial losses. So it would appear from a very slight application of arithmetic to recent figures as to pit prices, on the one hand, and as to rates fixed under the auspices of that. august authority, the London Coal Exchange, on the other, when account is taken of the intermediate charges said to be unavoidable. We here assume, of course, that what is sold as "Best A's" does not consist of a blend of what was bought as "Second B's" and "Third C's." There are mysteries in the coal as in the wine trade, but caveat emptor. As to the coal-owners, it would be rash to assume that they are as a class rolling up fortunes. Quite possibly half, or even two-thirds, of the total present output of coal is being , delivered—when the railway companies are obliging-- ' under contracts entered into in July last for twelve months or more. A certain, not large, proportion of owners who never, or rarely, make long selling contracts must be doing magnificeatly. But the majority are probably, after a long period of depression, only profiting at present by the high prices over the smaller part of their pro- duction. Of course, if the boom lasts six months longer, there will be a different story to tell, though before that time those concerned in the trade will do well to consider whether moderation in prices may not prove, in the long run, a more paying policy than that of grasping at the highest rates attainable. Meanwhile it is a matter for public thankfulness that throughout the mining districts, by peaceful arrangement, and generally, if not in every z case, after representative discussion, the actual "winners of the coal are obtaining a substantial share in the en- hanced rewards of their industry.
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