1274 THE COLLIERY GUARDIAN. . - - - jCTE 18, 1915. Society Spontaneously held a meeting, and gave their men an advance’of ’2d. a ton all round/ That represented an increase of about 25 per cent, in the wages book. That was not 2d. bn each ton of coal that went out, but it had to be multiplied at least twice; ,it was 2d. to the men loading it into vans,, and 2d. to the man who delivered it, and there was also 2d. on other items of labour which came in, but which they could not allocate definitely to any particular class of coal. Then the next item advanced was wages. Then there was an advance in the cost of forage. In the early part of the summer they were paying 16s. 8d. for oats; their last purchase was 33s. 6d. A good many horses, as well as motor vans, were requisitioned by the Government in the early part of the war. It had been extremely difficult to replace those horses. The price of horses had gone up at least £10, and the stamp of horse was very difficult to find. Their horses generally cost them anything from £70 to £80 apiece. Now, they could not get them under from about £80 to £85. Labour was extremely scarce. With regard to wagon hire, they worked their wagons on the minimum scale, and it was pretty, much the same with their horses; that is to say, they did not want to keep horses eating their heads off all during the summer, and generally kept enough to do a little more than their summer trade, and supplemented them in the winter by hiring cartage from cartage contractors, a great many of whom did scavenging work for the borough councils. Mr. Locket said it was impossible to get any hired cartage this winter at all, and they were paying 50 per cent, advance on last year’s figures. Then they had given their clerks an increase on their salaries because of the increased cost of living, ranging from 5s. a week to 2s. 6d. in the case of boys. Sir Arthur Markham’s Proposals. Sir Arthur B. Markham, Bart., M.P., who gave evidence on March 1, said his views briefly were these : The last amount of coal that had to be brought to the market to meet the needs of the community determined the price on the whole quantity of coal that was sold. If there was a shortage of coal, the last quantity of coal necessary to meet the needs of the market, by the ordinary law of supply and demand, determined the price over the whole quantity. The difference between the available supply and the demand, or vice versa, had'only to be very minute to cause a very high rise or a big fall in price, out of all proportion to the small diminution, or, on the other hand, the over-production which might arise from time to time. Up till the end of December the coal trade was in a depressed condition, the supply of coal was greater than the demand, and conse- quently prices were low, and the collieries had difficulty in disposing of their output. The great change came on the market in the beginning of January. Owing, to the large number of men enlisting and the difficulties of the railway companies handling the traffic, there was a shortage, not very large, but still sufficient to produce a set of condi- tions which caused coal during January to rise no less than from 70 to 100 per cent, at the pit mouth over the price prevailing in December last. Probably 80 per cent, of the coal produced at the colliery was sold on contract. Con- tracts were made last year in a falling market, that is, before the outbreak of war. The merchants were at that time receiving probably 80 per cent, of their supplies at these reduced prices. Owing to the conditions, which were not normal, the price in January, owing to the supply not being equal to the demand, brought about this great rise in the price of coal. The merchants were in a difficult position in dealing with this problem. Those of them who had made large contracts were in the fortunate position of being able to make at least 100 per cent, profit. In normal times the best coals and common coals were considerably wide apart, but when prices were high people would buy any rubbish as long as they could get anything that was black. Warwickshire coals were an inferior class of coals. They were coals which in normal times it is difficult to sell; and so were Leicestershire coals, compared with Derby- shire coals or Yorkshire coals. The price of best coals and of the most inferior Warwickshire coals were now approxi- mately the same:' there might bei a difference of 2s. The position of the coal owner was that the amount of what one might term free coal which the collieries had was very limited. Although they might have a margin of 20 per cent., that did not mean they had 20 per cent, of house- hold coal to place on the market, because out of every 100 tons of coal produced in a mine there were various qualities which were unsuitable for household purposes, particularly slacks, nuts, peas, and other qualities of coal which house- holders did not care to buy. Therefore the margin of coal which the colliery people could put on the market to obtain the advantage of these high rates was very limited indeed; * in fact, probably not 15 per cent, of the coal being sold in London that day was at the price prevailing at the moment. The merchant got the difference of the big rise in price. The railways have to some extent brought about these con- ditions of high prices, inasmuch as there had been no doubt delay in moving the traffic; again, owing to military reasons, the transport of troops from one district to another, and the great amount of stores which the railway com- panies were carrying for military purposes. This congestion of traffic had had the effect of to some extent reducing the quantity of coal which would, under normal circumstances, come to London. But he did not think that the congestion of the railways, had been responsible, for anything like the dislocation of traffic which it was generally thought by the trade had been occasioned. He had no doubt the Committee had been told that the merchant’s cost had risen very con- siderably owing to the loss on wagons. In point of fact it was not true. Coal was carried in wagons chiefly of 10 tons capacity, and of recent years 12-ton wagons had been built. The 10-ton wagon carried from nine to 10 tons of coal, and the railway companies, if they carried the coal, charged Is. per ton for conveying coal to London from most of the coalfields. If the colliery owner provided the wagon he then had the benefit of the Is. per ton, orJf the merchant provided the wagons he had the benefit, and the railway companies in that case, if they did not provide wagons themselves, made a charge which was only for the toll, less the wagon. If the railway toll exceeded 8s. 3d. a ton, the railway companies then charged an additional 3d. a ton for wagon hire, and the colliery owners and the merchant who owned the wagons were likewise entitled to charge an additional 3d. for the distance where the rate exceeded 8s. 3d. Take the case of a wagon coming up from the coal- fields to London and carrying, say. nine tons -. this wagon earned for . the nwner 9s. The wagon had taken a period to arrive, in London, of x.: But the coal merchant said :—“ In order, to pay .me for the long time my wagons have been taking to reach London from the coalfields,;, it is necessary for me to add to the nine tons that have been brought in deducted 10 per cent, from the'minimum quantity bought/ to allow'for the shortage of delivery from the collieries, and the net amount was 21,275 tons. If they deducted that from the average sales of 35,000 tons, they got 15,000 tons short bought per month. Their actual sales in January were 40,480 tons, so that they had only got about half their quantity, bought under contract during the month of January 1915. .. Witness said that a good many contracts were made on the .sliding scale basis. Mr. Locket .said . most of the household contracts were made on the sliding scale basis. The general arrangement was that if the price in London advanced Is., the pit price advanced 6d. He had known many cases where there had been considerable pressure brought to bear upon merchants in London to put the price up, because the colliery owner believed he was not getting enough under his sliding scale contract. Mr. Charrington declared emphatically that there was no “coal ring ” in London. .The Coal Merchants’ Society had nothing to do with fixing public prices, and had always steadily' refused to have anything to do with it. The only arrangement was this : that those merchants who adver- tised prices agreed among themselves that the price should be put up; any one merchant on the market, whether he advertised or not, if he was in a large business, could put the price down by making his.own price lower. He did that constantly. It took the whole lot to put the price up Is., but anyone could put it down. There was no “ring”, in the ordinary accepted sense of a “ ring ’’ that there was a body of men who agreed pricfes, and agreed to fine or punish in some way anybody who broke away from it. There had never been anything of that sort in the coal trade. The present state of things was the worst possible thing for the coal trade. They always suffered very much more afterwards than any gain at the time. As a matter of fact, it generally fell on tyro firms—Rickett, Cockerell and Company, who were the biggest firm; and Brewis Brothers, who were what one might call a doubtful quantity—colliery owners as well as coal merchants—and one never knew what they would do. When there was a fall it was nearly always Brewis Brothers who reduced, their price; if they went down Is., they all had to follow, and they'did it without consulting them at’ all. They' traded under the name of the Tyne Main Coal Company, and were not coal factors. “Coal factor ” was rather a difficult term now. The old Society of Coal Factors was practically extinct. There was a certain number of people who bought large quantities of coal rather on speculation, to sell them again to merchants who might happen to want them who had adopted the name of coal factors. Brewis : did a certain amount of coal factoring under the name of Bateman, and they were all factors to a certain extent, as they bought and sold. The factor used in the old days of seaborne coal to finance the colliery very often; he was a very important person, and he had to sell the .cargoes of coal on the market, but there was p little business in seaborne house coal, that that was prac- tically extinct, now.. The people who were known as coal factors now were people who bought large quantities on the chance of being able to sell it at 3d, or 6d, a ton advance to some merchant who was short. There were very few Coal merchants' who had any interest in collieries. Speaking of transit, Mr. Charrington said coal came to London in three classes of trucks—merchants’ trucks, those owned by the collieries, ^tnd those owned by the railway companies. . The merchants were not supposed to keep trucks adequate to their full necessities. They got the colliery trucks or railway trucks to, make up. Some collieries tried to get a clause in their contracts that a merchant should supply, trucks for the whole quantity, but the mer- chants always fought against that. Trucks had been a very important factor in this rise, because owing to the congestion they had been standing idle loaded instead of being emptied and sent back to the collieries to re-load. The ordinary normal hire for 4 truck for the journey was Is. per ton from ahy colliery to London. They had lately paid 2s. per ton per journey, and now could not get any at that figure, and should have to pay 3s. per ton per journey if they could got the trucks, but they were not to be had. That was a private owner’s truck ; they were not .worth putting into a separate class, because when let on hire to a coal merchant they became coal merchants’ trucks for the time being. There were very few of them. It would not pay any merchant to have trucks up to his maximum requirements, just as it would not pay him to' buy coal up, to his maximum estimate of demand. Mr. Charrington considered that if the Government fixed maiximunr prices for the collieries’ coal and for merchants, they would be doing a very useful service. Mr. Locket agreed, but said, it Avas a ?thing bristling with difficulties'. The. difficulties were : that to fix the maximum price at which coal was to he sold in London, they must also fix the maximum price at which it was to be sold at the pit. It was extremely difficult to say to what particular description of coal that maximum price should apply. Coal varied at the pit in the most enormous way as regards value, and it was only those connected with the trade who would know why one particular coal would fetch 3d. or 4d. more than another. They would have to have a schedule of prices, and it would be a very complicated schedule. It was a matter of taste on the part’of the merchants to some extent, and to a certain degree it was due to the energy or deficiency of the coal salesman, and it was also due to the reputation a colliery had for carrying out its engagements honourably. Take Derbyshire, they got coal from ,the same seam from different collieries commanding as much as Is. a ton differ- ence, although probably the consumer could see very little difference in the burning of the coal in the grate. Mr. Locket said they did not engage in the trolley trade. They sold a large quantity of coal under contract. They had been personally to the people with whom they had contracts, and had pointed out the difficulties under which they were labouring, that a great many of their men and horses had been taken, that their expenses had gone up, that their