June 4, 1915.

THE COLLIERY GUARDIAN.

1175

buyers, although anxious to fix up contracts for
ensuing year, are hesitating owing to the increase in
prices, and no great business has been transacted.
The effect of Italy’s intervention is having a con-
siderable effect on the Cardiff trade, but otherwise
the position of the market is little changed. Best
&nd second qualities remain unavailable, and ordi-
naries are quoted high. A quieter state of affairs
obtains in the Scottish coal trade.

On Tuesday next, before the Manchester Geological
and Mining Society, at Manchester, Mr. Herbert
Bolton will read a paper on “The Fauna and Strati-
graphy of the Kent Coalfield.”

It is understood that the report of the Home Office
Committee on the output and labour of the coalmining
industry will not be laid upon the table of the House
but will go directly into Departmental consideration,
so as to serve for guidance in respect of the mobilisa-
tion of industry.

A general meeting of the South Wales Institute of
Engineers was held at Cardiff last week.

An instructive contribution to the question of coal
sampling was submitted by Mr. T. W. D. Gregory
before a meeting of the North Staffordshire Institute
of Mining and Mechanical Engineers on Monday.

The annual conference of the Central Association
of Miners’ Permanent Belief Societies was held on
Tuesday.

Negotiations by the Pekin Syndicate for closer
co-operative measures have now been concluded, and
an Anglo-Chinese corporation has been created.

At the request of the Board of Trade a conference
took place at Cardiff on Monday between representa-
tives of the South Wales coalowners and Chambers
of Commerce on the means to prevent a further
increase in the price of coal, particularly for industrial
and household purposes. No scheme was formulated.
It was pointed out that, except some Monmouthshire
varieties, very little South Wales coal was consumed
in home industries.

Arrangements have been completed for the consti-
tution, of a local committee at Middlesbrough-, who
will have authority to issue certificates for the export
of foundry pig iron to neutral countries.

There appears to be a possibility of further trouble
in the South Staffordshire coal field. The men who
recently went on strike have been summoned for
neglect of work, and this action of the owners the
men resent, and threaten to again down tools unless
the summonses are withdrawn.

On Monday, the South Wales Coal Conciliation
Board received the proposals of the men for a new
wage agreement. The matter was adjourned until
Wednesday next. The present agreement terminates
on the 30th inst.

Complaints are being made by the men regarding
the payment of the war bonus in the Yorkshire
coalfield. The deputies are also agitating for the
advance of 15J per cent, granted to the miners.

A meeting of the Scottish Coal Trade Conciliation
Board on Tuesday discussed the miners’ claim for an
advance of 50 per cent, on basis rates. No decision
was reached, and the meeting adjourned until the
15th inst.

Representatives of gas industries will next week
interview members of Parliament in an endeavour to
have the prices of coal reduced.

The physician may prefer that the
Labour patient should not cogitate upon his
Unrest : condition when an illness is at the
A Remedy, crisis ; similarly, this is not the best
time perhaps to discuss the causes
and effects of the very serious tendencies that have
manifested themselves in the industrial organisation
of this country under the strain of unparalleled
difficulties. On the other part, the fact remains that
the dangers that have been brought into dark relief
on the luminous background of the war have for long-
been present, and thoughtful men for years past
have been dimly conscious that, whatever progress
our country may have made in a material sense, the
defects in our industrial system, instead of being
annealed in the crucible of experience, were possibly
setting up a fatal derangement in the internal
economy of the nation.

Many books have been written, many commissions
have been held, but they have given us few crumbs
of comfort. Socialism in its many guises, compulsory
arbitration, co-partnery, and the other panaceas
have all somehow failed to attract the imagination,
and now, when the country is struggling for its life,
we have the ugly spectacles of manufacturers selling
munitions to the foe and workmen gambling with
the lives of their defenders

Some Pericles may arise to point some clear way
by which the country shall be able to emerge from
the slough in which selfishness and obstinacy have
conspired to engulf it, but he will need to be a
constructionist of high ability, for even if we muddle
through now by compromise and makeshift, the war
will have wrought so profound a change upon our
industrial system that no ordinary measures will
suffice to carry out a great work of restoration.

Some very attractive suggestions on one phase of
the question are offered in a little book that has
reached us.* The means proposed by the author, in
a dispassionate style that should alone entitle him to
a hearing, for combating tendencies that threaten
the country with untold dangers during the trials of
to-day and the perpetuation of a neurotic condition
after it has emerged from this destructive war, are,
briefly, the enforcement of disciplinary measures
upon employers and employed by the State, and
what may be called the sublimation of the Trade
Union.

The first of these remedies is not new ; it was dis-
cussed ctcl nauseam by the Industrial Council in its
enquiry into industrial agreements, and it may be
doubted whether under our political system of old
the State was capable of undertaking the duties
proposed to be thrust upon it. Mr. Toogood has also
seen that the trade union, as constituted, could not
be trusted in the capacity of principle. He points
out that “the failure of the labour movement to
secure an enduring peace is the failure of good
intentions lacking a correspondingly good backing
of knowledge.” This is not a surprising result when
we consider the constitution of the trade union. In
other communities formed for mutual interest, there
is prominent a genuine, if at times selfish, desire to
preserve quality of membership rather than numerical
strength. The Institution of Civil Engineers does
not open its doors to every neophyte or huckster who
can pay the fees of membership, the British Medical
Association has been able to lay a heavy hand upon
malpractices in the medical profession. As a
consequence these bodies have been trusted, and
responsibilities have confidently been conferred upon
them. It is only in the trade union that the qualifi-
’ cation of membership has been reduced to the lowest
permissible level; unnecessary and costly strikes
have been declared to force into its ranks men whose
inclusion has done nothing to enhance the moral
credit of the union. Leaders of men who may
inwardly have developed a high conception of their
calling have been forced to pander to the instincts of
the most debased; again and again they have been
debarred from meeting some honourable engage-
ment. As a consequence the morale of industry has
been lowered, and not only the trade but the life of
the nation has suffered.

When a trade union begins' to take a pride in the
calling- which it represents, not only in the work
of muscle but in the brain power behind, when the
false economics that have been so sedulously preached
in the workshop are laid to rest, we shall have got
to the stage when labour can perform its share in
developing the spirit of the country. A nation
whose sole thought is the vain pursuit of a “living
wage,” without regard to age, ability, industry or
conduct, is incapable of great things. As Mr.
Toogood says, “neither State benefits nor increases
of wages which fail to discriminate according to
character and conduct can ever succeed.”

Space prevents us from following the author
throughout his attractive arguments. His scheme,
it will be seen, is to make the workmen the judges
of their fellows; to give trade unions the fullest
support to enable them to enforce their rules; and
to confer upon the honest and efficient workman the

“Labour Unrest.” By George Edson Toogood.
London: A.. Brown and Sons. 6d. net.

due reward for his industry. Offers of such support
have been tendered by the best class of employer
repeatedly ; they have never been accepted, and it is
useless to ignore the fact that the fault does not lie
only with the trade union, but is a result also of the
arrant selfishness of employers themselves, and a
distrust in the wisdom and fairness of our political
governors as the final arbiters in cases of dispute.

Mr. Toogood is perhaps too sanguine in his belief
that a good Government can allocate all human
effort to its true plane, and dispel all the errors that
exist with regard to the true value of money or
manual labour. ' Our rulers in the past have only
been draconic when dealing with criminals of the
common type, whose means of retaliation are few
and insignificant ; ' the industrial criminal, whose
moral depravity leads him to selfish and deliberate
acts, the dangerous import of which is much more
serious to the nation, as often as not is pusillani-
mously rewarded instead of being punished.

Many of our fellow countrymen are incurably
selfish, and we must come to look upon selfishness as
something worse than a negative virtue. The gifted
author of “Erewhon” once playfully twitted the
human kind for its straitened view of crime. There
are some forms of vice not commonly regarded as
criminal, that may have to be cured by liultur in the
accepted fashion. The author, in this: constructive
little work, suggests a gentler way of dealing with
such disorders.

We have on more than one occasion
Trade and called attention to the great incon-
International venience arising from the use by
Standardisa- foreign countries of different units
tion. of measurement. This is especially
noticeable in the official statistics of
the Board of Trade and other Government depart-
ments. Even the ton, used almost invariably to
measure coal output, is employed in different senses,
and the ambiguity attaching to the different values
of long tons, short tons and metric tons is an
unfailing source of trouble to the compiler of
comparative statistics.

This question assumes a new interest in view of
the conditions arising out of the war. It will be of
still greater importance when the war is brought to
a conclusion, alid the new trade conditions that will
have been thus established assume their legitimate
course. We may illustrate this view by referring to
the Russia of the future. It is expected on all sides
that the commercial relations between Great Britain
and Russia will be placed upon an intimate basis.
Hitherto Germany has held a preponderating
influence in Russian markets, and without question
she will endeavour to regain that advantage after
the war. According to our consular reports, British
manufacturers are often severely handicapped by
their indifference to small details in their quotations.
They fail to adapt them to the local conditions,
giving their specifications in English measurements
although these may be quite unintelligible to the mind
of the customer. Russian measurements are particu-
larly complicated in this respect. It is true that the
British imperial inch and foot, as well as the metre,
are in use, and the former units have become fairly
established in engineering measurements, but the
archine is also much in evidence in trade, and in
mine surveying and land measurements the sagene
(= 3 archines = 7 ft.) is still commonly employed.
With regard to weights, Russian official figures now
usually appear in British publications in metric tons,
but for general use the pood (about 36 lb.) is almost
universally employed.

Closely connected with this question in this
country is the Decimal Association, whose report for
the year 1914 is just in our hands. Here we find,
emphatically expressed, an echo of the view
expressed above that we are on the threshold of a
new era for British trade, and that we must be
prepared to enter upon it with up-to-date methods.
The above-named association, however, being com-
posed of practical men, see the futility of advocating
any sudden revolution in our methods. The change
must be gradually initiated, and the process has
already begun. Thus the metric , carat came into