The principal fact for everybody to bear in mind is
that a fight would settle nothing whatever. The issue stands by itself and has no. precedents. There is always a tactical arguinent for a strike when the workers think that they are getting an insufficient share of the profits, but in the present case when the subsidy has been removed —and it is certain that it will be removed—there will be no profits. A fight, therefore, would settle nothing. When it was over; when all the plant of the mines had deteriorated, when the men were exhausted and perhaps starving, there would be a renewal of negotiations with much less hope than now of a settlement that would help everybody. Reconstruction would be vastly more .difficult, there would be less money than ever to share, more markets would have been lost, and fewer men would be needed. We trust that it will be made plain to the miners' leaders, if it is not already plain to them, that these things will be the inevitable result of a fight.
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