soon find that it is a case of out of
the frying-pan into the it. stopped, that is not so in the coal-mining industry. That industry must feel a permanent effect from the strike. fire, and they will encounter another monopoly which Though the strike has only lasted a fortnight and a day, will hold them to ransom quite as effectually as have the forces and influences have been sot at work which cannot miners' unions." That, of course, is perfectly true in the now be stopped, and every day that the strike lasts they abstract, but the practical answer is to be found in the gain ground. We say without fear of contradiction that fact that oil is much easier to transport and to store than. the industrial historian of the future will declare that coal, because it is infinitely less bulky in proportion to the coal industry of this country reached its zenith on the energy which is derived from it. The storage problem, February 29th, 1912, and on March 1st of that year began which, as we have shown before, is in the last resort the its declension. only method of fighting the miners' monopoly, is a far Unconsciously, or, rather, while meaning to produce easier problem in the case of oil than in the case of coal. exactly the opposite result, the minors have by their Another injury which, as we have pointed out before, has been done to the miners by the strike is the enormous universal strike dealt a blow to the employment of hewing and transporting coal underground and raising it to the little trouble all the power that is dormant in the oil. This may in the end be a good thing for the nation, but You do not in transport work have to haul about not only it is certainly not the thing which the men want, the power you need, but tons upon tons of cinders. Take and for which they have held up three-fourths of our the example of a ship which is coaled in England for a long industries. They of course do not want to see a single voyage. The coal, considered scientifically, consists mine closed in this country or to do anything to decrease of energy and ashes and cinders. But since they demand. Yet that is exactly what they are doing. This cannot be separated and the ashes and cinders thrown action of theirs, contrary to their own material interests, overboard till the coal is used, a great part of the ship is in the last resort due to a belief, which is unfor- room and of the engine power is used to convey these tunately rife among all trade unionists, that there is cinders across the ocean. Think how large a part of a fixed demand for commodities, and that people will the vessel's capacity is taken up by the blinkers and how continue to use this or that article in undiminished many tons of dead weight have to be hauled at the expense quantity. Any readjustment that is necessary can, they of the shipper till the point is reached where the last tons assert, be easily made either by a reduction of profits or of coal are used for raising steam. in the case of oil this the raising of prices, or a combination of both. As a wastage of space and energy is reduced to a minimem, matter of fact, demand, the ultimate source of all economic Again, think of the toil of shovelling coal and then re- TOPICS 011±1 IHE D.AN. member how oil will flow through a pipe and can be con- trolled by a tap. Coal, however, had, as we have said, the advantage of being first in the field. People were accus- tomed to its use, and since in business as elsewhere THE STRIKE. nobody wants to go out and look for trouble, they went on. WHETHER the coal strike is settled this week, or using it rather than be worried by adopting a new type of next, or the week after, it has lasted long enough engine and a new fuel. The fact that on paper it could to cause serious and permanent injury to the Miners. be shown that the saving of liquid fuel would soon pay We are not pessimistic as to the harm that has been for such alterations did not lead to their being made. done to the general industry of the country, though tin- Men always prefer to go on as before so long as they questionably here there has been formidable if temporary are not incurring an actual loss. Now, however, the waste and loss. There is always waste when men who users of power have had a fright in regard to the use want to work, and whom the economic conditions allow to of coal, or, to put it in another way, the advantages of work, are prevented from doing so by some physical fact liquid fuel have been given the greatest advertisement like a flood, or a blizzard, or a frost, or through the action that the world has ever seen—an advertisement which of some State-made law, or some social or political move- could have been obtained in no other way. The coal ment which has no economic foundation. These losses, industry was, in any case, on the verge of being shoved however, will soon be made up mad forgotten, and though a a stage lower down in industry, and the coal strike great deal of misery and suffering has been caused it is to be came at the psychological moment and pushed it over hoped that there has not as yet been any very serious injury the edge. But perhaps it will be said that what is true to the common weal. But though in other trades the men of coal is also true of oil, and that we have in fact proved will, for the most part, be able to pick up the work where too much. " The users of oil," it may be urged, " will soon find that it is a case of out of the frying-pan into the it. stopped, that is not so in the coal-mining industry. That industry must feel a permanent effect from the strike. fire, and they will encounter another monopoly which Though the strike has only lasted a fortnight and a day, will hold them to ransom quite as effectually as have the forces and influences have been sot at work which cannot miners' unions." That, of course, is perfectly true in the now be stopped, and every day that the strike lasts they abstract, but the practical answer is to be found in the gain ground. We say without fear of contradiction that fact that oil is much easier to transport and to store than. the industrial historian of the future will declare that coal, because it is infinitely less bulky in proportion to the coal industry of this country reached its zenith on the energy which is derived from it. The storage problem, February 29th, 1912, and on March 1st of that year began which, as we have shown before, is in the last resort the its declension. only method of fighting the miners' monopoly, is a far Unconsciously, or, rather, while meaning to produce easier problem in the case of oil than in the case of coal. exactly the opposite result, the minors have by their Another injury which, as we have pointed out before, has been done to the miners by the strike is the enormous universal strike dealt a blow to the employment of hewing advertisement which has been given to the fact that in this surface, from which it will never completely recover. Even country We have been hitherto absurdly extravagant in our if in the future as many or more tons of coal are brought use of coal. Economists have preached for years against to the surface in any one year, though this, we think, is our wastefulness in this respect, but their warnings unlikely, the number of men employed in the process and have not been heeded. Again, lovers of pure air have the total wages bill paid will never be so large as they pointed out, but almost always to deaf ears, how were just before the strike. Let no one suppose that we we have been defiling the country by our improvi- are foolish enough to think that this must always be the dent use of coal and by our habit of turning loose consequence of a rise in wages, whether it takes place by millions of units of energy in the shape of smoke. But the gradual operation of economic forces or through what the economists and the lovers of beauty have failed strikes or the threat of strikes. There are plenty of to do has been done by the universal coal strike. Here, conditions under which such movements are success- again, a world on the very verge of a change has been ful, and therefore are amply justified ; for we must pushed over the edge by the events of the past fortnight. never forget that the object and the legitimate, nay the We are confident that the end of February 1912 will be necessary, object of the worker is to increase his rune_ a landmark in the more economical use of coal. It would, neration and sell his commodity—labour—at the very best of course, be far too much to say that the open fire will possible advantage, that is, in the highest market. But at once be got rid of ; but undoubtedly it will 'begin to be these conditions are not now present in the British coal restricted and at a rapidly accelerated pace. Nor, industry. The coal industry before the strike began, again, will the diminution in the use of coal become though apparently so prosperous, was in reality to a apparent at once. At first we shall be told that the very large extent a threatened industry. The advance demand for coal is as brisk as or brisker than ever,but before in the price of coal of recent years, coupled with the die. very long that demand will fall away, even though the coveries of mineral oil throughout the world, had already trade boom be maintained. The public will then have a begun to turn men's attention to the production of power practical lesson in the principles of economics. A. lessened either through the combustion engine or else by the use of demand for coal must mean a reduction of the amount of liquid fuel to raise steam. Except that coal was first in the coal hewn. But if less coal is hewn there will be fewer field, and that the vast majority of engines in the country are miners employed. That is a proposition from which there designed to use coal and not liquid fuel, and also that is no escape. Remember also that, coincidently with this coal is on the spot in England, there can be no doubt that lessened demand in the future, the mineovrners in self- we could obtain power from oil more cheaply and con_ defence are sure to do their utmost to introduce labour- veniently than from coal. Oil does not produce cinders saving machines and in other ways to economize in labour and other waste products. You get with comparatively and to reduce the numbers of men working underground. little trouble all the power that is dormant in the oil. This may in the end be a good thing for the nation, but You do not in transport work have to haul about not only it is certainly not the thing which the men want, the power you need, but tons upon tons of cinders. Take and for which they have held up three-fourths of our the example of a ship which is coaled in England for a long industries. They of course do not want to see a single voyage. The coal, considered scientifically, consists mine closed in this country or to do anything to decrease of energy and ashes and cinders. But since they demand. Yet that is exactly what they are doing. This cannot be separated and the ashes and cinders thrown action of theirs, contrary to their own material interests, overboard till the coal is used, a great part of the ship is in the last resort due to a belief, which is unfor- room and of the engine power is used to convey these tunately rife among all trade unionists, that there is cinders across the ocean. Think how large a part of a fixed demand for commodities, and that people will the vessel's capacity is taken up by the blinkers and how continue to use this or that article in undiminished many tons of dead weight have to be hauled at the expense quantity. Any readjustment that is necessary can, they of the shipper till the point is reached where the last tons assert, be easily made either by a reduction of profits or of coal are used for raising steam. in the case of oil this the raising of prices, or a combination of both. As a wastage of space and energy is reduced to a minimem, matter of fact, demand, the ultimate source of all economic value, is elastic in a double sense. It will spring very easily to a high level in response to cheapened production, but it will also very easily be depressed to a low level by an increase in the cost of production. But it may be said : Do you mean, therefore, that the men are never to ask for or get higher wages for fear of decreasing the demand ? Of course we mean nothing of the kind. Men can and will be able to got better wages without depressing or decreasing demand when the economic conditions allow. But they will never be able to do so when the economic conditions do not allow. In other words, they will never be able to get improvement and an increase of exchanges by an artificially, induced scarcity. There are two things, and only two, which can cause an increase of prices— one beneficent and one harmful. The beneficent cause is demand. The non-beneficent cause is scarcity. Scarcity is the enemy of the producer as much as of the consumer, and the test of whether a particular movement is economi- cally beneficial to a community is whether it is tending to the production. of scarcity or to the production of abundance.
Though we hold that the ultimate result of the present strike must, for the various reasons we have given above, be injurious to the men, we are not by any means sure that it will ultimately be bad for the community. It is quite possible, indeed, that it will be just the reverse. We want waking up, and the strike may very likely have wakened the community to employ cheaper and less wasteful ways of obtaining energy than by the use of coal. By this means not only will the clangorous weapon of monopoly be knocked out of the hands of the coal minors, but an actual saving in production in many industries be obtained. In the end we shall get our transport done more cheaply and our energy in a great many instances at a more reasonable price. Unfortunately, however, this is bound to cause a good deal of suffering. From the moral point of view, if net from the economic, it is most desirable that transitions of this kind should come as slowly and as gradually—we had almost said as imperceptibly—as possible. An event like the strike makes them come so rapidly as to cause pain. And hero we come back to the original trouble of the strike. The strike, remember, was caused not because the men be- lieved that they had an economic opportunity to force capital to take a smaller share of profit and themselves a larger—a legitimate cause for a strike—but because the union leaders had got it into their heads that the minimum wage was an engine of power which, when obtained, could be used to enforce the miners' monopoly. In truth, the miners are trying to do something which has been tried again and again, and no doubt often by the capitalists, but never with success, that is, the cornering of a com- modity and the holding of the public to ransom. Such an attempt may succeed for a time, but
"Each fatal triumph brings more near The inevitable end."
The inevitable end is that the working of economic laws destroys the monopoly. The only result is a great amount of economic waste which might have been avoided, and out of which avoidance both capital and labour would really have obtained far more benefit than if the ways of the highwayman had been followed.
A. good deal has been said about the callousness of the miners to the sufferings which they have caused in the community as a whole. Though we are far from saying that moral considerations ought not to have weighed with the men in their action—we hold, indeed, that moral considerations ought never to be excluded from political, social, and economic action— it is not our intention to press this point. It is a very difficult one to press without an. appearance of hypocrisy. We must also remember that even though the action of the men may have been callous, the majority of them have been, no doubt, deluded into thinking that they are pioneers showing their fellows the way, though it may be a way of suffering, to better things. But if this is their excuse, the miners have forgotten how dangerous it is for men to be judges in their own cause. We would far rather that they should simply and plainly say that their object is to sell the commodity which they have to sell at a higher price, and that they thought they saw an excellent opportunity for doing so. That is absolutely safe ground for them. But if that was their object they certainly went in the present instance a very foolish way about accomplishing it. We must end as we began. Owing to the conditions governing the use of coal, the coal strike of 1912 will not in the end enable the miners to sell their labour to better advantage.
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