LABOUR DEMANDS IN THE COAL TRADE.
ITo THE EDITOR. or TEE SPECUTOR."1 Sta,—It is just as well that the public should know what the recent demand of the miners 'for a 30 per cent. increase of wages together with 25 per cent. reduction of hours will mean. 11the for example the present wage of about .25 to £7 a week, which is roughly speaking about what a miner earns by piece- work now in a forty-six-hours week. Thirty per cent. en beefs
rates will bring this up to Al or XS a week; add another 55 per cent. for redaction of hours from eight to six a day, and we arrive at £7 to .29 paid for the some work that now costa .25 to .27. The guaranteed minimum wage in the Yorkshire district is now 15s. 2.5541. per day.
The reduction of boars will in addition entail a for more than corresponding reduction of output, for two reasons. One is that the higher the wages that are paid, the worse is the time that is kept; miners now lose from all causes from five to seven hours a week. The other is because the time taken up going from the pit's mouth to the working face is considerable. Thus the six hours a day means in practice. after allowing half-an-hour for meals, about four and a half hours( work only at the coal-face. The shorter the hours, the greater proportion of wasted time in getting to the pit's mouth from home, and in getting to the coal-face from the pit's mouth.
1Vhat this means to the public. is probably an increased price of teal of front Os. to 104. a ton, and, to put it mildly, an exceedingly serious decrease of output, sufficiently serious not only to starve all the industries of the country, but to starve the rich and poor alike in their homes. Where six and a half tons are got now we should only get four and a half, other things being the same, and they would be approximately the same for a long time. There is no disputing this appalling fact. It is only possible to put the number of men into a mine that you have working faces open for, and the increase of. working faces takes a long time, and adds materially to the cost of working the colliery when being done.
That the whole of this increase will come directly upon the public no one who knows anything about mines can deny. The idea that even any part of this metre coat can be taken out of the colliery-owner is a delusion. It is also a delusion to think that if the mine-owner's profits were taken away it would make up for the deficiency of the supply of coal. As a matter of fact, it would simply make matters worse, as the mine- owner in such a case could not be expected to supply the extra capital necessary. To begin with, it is perhaps not generally known that at the present time all but 5 per cent. of the excess profits (and this latter is taxed at es., leaving 34 per cent. only) made by a colliery is taken by the Government. But apart from this, in normal times the balk of the collieries are very well satisfied indeed if they can clear from lid. to ls. profit on a ton. Even if it were just and practical to take all this away, it would not go far to make up the difference of the cost of conl if these increased wages are given. The cost before the war at pit's mouth was about 7s. a ton, and the men were getting very well paid. Should these increases and reduction take place, it would then be about 2611. to 28s. a ton; it is now about 18s. to 20s. There are, and always will be, a few collieries that pay exceedingly well for the reasons that they have good seams and favourable natural conditions. No matter how the wages rise. these collieries will continue to pay exceedingly well for the simple reason that the price of coal is regulated, not at what these favoured collieries can produce it at, but at what a low average of collieries can produce it for—i.e., collieries that in normal times are working at very moderate profits. These collieries are obliged to raise the price of coal when the costs increase, otherwise they must close down. This leaves the profitable collieries where they were. You cannot get at the rich man or the rich colliery through taxing the poor. He can be got at, but this must be done from above. The rich man in industry in a Free Trade country, I do not any necessarily in the coal trade, generally earns his wealth by benefiting and enriching the public by making them something they want, and making it cheaper and better, or both, than was supplied before. To punish this man for making wealth would be national lose. It would discourage enterprise, progress, cheap- ness, and plenty, and encourage waste, stupidity, and scarcity. If a fortune is fairly made, and most of them are, the rich man has earned it just as fairly as the olever piece-worker earns his extra money. He has earned it by the creation of more goods or better goods than would have been created with- out him. You can, I think, fairly say this to him ( " You have fairly earned your money, but you have earned it so much easier than other people and are so much better able to pay that you must submit to a greater taxation." The Income Tax, in my opinion, could be progressively increased in the cam of very high dividends and in the case of great individual wealth up to 10s. in the pound without injustice and without killing or injuring the goose that lays the golden eggs. It is obvious that we should not injure the goose for two reasons.
First, in doing so, as is done by excess profits at the present day, you encourage waste and fraud and discourage enter- prise, economic prodnction, and output. By over-taxation you eventually decrease the amount of taxable profits to bu taxed. It it is desired to get the bulk of the taxation out of rich men, and this is the desire, you must obviously leave rich men to be taxed, as if you manage to deetroy the rich men it is obvious the poor must pay the taxes themselves. By all means stop the rich from getting money unfairly if you can, but the money they get in fair trade is a pure gain to the community both in the benefits of the "plenty" they supply to the community and the taxes they pay for the benefit of the community. Another thing that must be pointed out is, that if the mine-owners to whose enterprise and at whose risk these profitable mines were opened are not entitled to the extra profits that they make, how much lees are the men who happen to work in their mines and who have risked no capital entitled to them. If part of these profits should be taken from the individual, they belong to the nation, and to the nation only.
The miners have got into their present dangerously powerful position partly through a misapprehension of the public as to what coal-mining is. The public think that it is a ghastly trade and cannot be too well paid. What are the facts? The miners generally work in a warm, well-ventilated atmosphere protected from all the hardships and discomforts of weather that outdoor workers must endure. Shipbuilders work outside ships in mouths of bitter cold weather and in months of almost unendurable heat between the sun and the iron hulks. The work of the builder, of the plumber and glazier, of the painter, of the carter, of the ordinary navvy (at iron- stone pits), and many others is subject to great hardships, as indeed is all outside work, to say nothing of the hardships of the seamen, especially fishermen, that the inland worker seldom realize& Compared with all these occupations the miner's occupation is a pleasant one taking the year through and taking into consideration how much bad and cold weather we have. The miner's occupation is dangerous, as many other occupations are, but as for the darkness, they get as indifferent and se accustomed to this as a bricklayer's labourer does to walking on a scaffold, which would fill the unaccustomed with terror and giddiness. The lads in the mining districts long for the day when they can go down the mines. Men are not forced to go down the mines, but are always leaving outdoor occupations of their awn free will to work in the colliery instead.
The granting of the eight hours to the miners some years ago was followed by numerous strikes. Soon they got the Minimum Wage Act. Since then their wages have constantly been increased, not only by general increases that the public know something about, but by detailed increases which are being perpetually demanded and obtained. Some two years ago they went in for decreased price of bread, and Mr. Sminie said that it was onore important for them to get this than extra wages. But they had not had the reduction of the loaf to 9d. many weeks before they demanded extra wages-- wages so high that if every one connected with the provision of the 9d. loaf was paid at the same rate, the loaf that would be provided for the miners at ad. would cost more like 9s. or 4s. Right through the war they have been threatening to hold up our Navy, our Army, our Allies, munition factories, and the community, and did hold them up from time to time without hesitation. Now they are threatening to starve the whole community in the winter to secure another reduction of hours, and this at a time when poor suffering humanity is toying to free itself from the horrors of war. They do not hesitate to draw this extra money from brother-workers who probably will not be getting a quarter the pay, and who have not got enough coal to keep themselves warm and cook their food. They threaten the country with a calamity far worse than the German Emperor would have been capable of ha -I he so willed.
There is only one way of meeting the danger as far as I can see, and that is not only to educate the public, but to educate the Trade Union portion of the public, and to show them that for their own sakes they must resist any unreasonable demand made by any particular section. The Government can only act effectually if supported by the public. The policy being pursued at present is no Labour policy. It is Labour that is getting impoverished and thrown out of work. The miners are in the abstract, no doubt, neither better nor worse than the rest of us. What they are suffering from is " autocratic power," which no class of men is or ever has been fit for. They have been trying to get it for a long time, and have at last succeeded, aided by the papers, the war, the public, and by the Government. There is no remedy until the people clearly recognize the position, and -460 their influence to bring about a better state of things. It is said it is natural for the miners to take this advantage. This may be so, but what is unnatural Is that the people should allow it. IS there anything plainer than that The whole position must be challenged and resisted by the people who have to pay and suffer.
The colliers alone of all industrial classes never work overtime, and the Government apparently dare not suspend the Eight Hours Act, although there was a special provision for doing this. Numbers of the miners voluntarily enlisted and fought bravely, but as a body they seemed to forget that they fought in vain on the battlefield if they declined to take the responsibility of good citizens at home.—I am, Sir, &c.,
Ore oe THE Prone.
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