1328

THE COLLIERY. GUARDIAN.

June 25, 1915.

to point to a connection in some way. With regard to
Mr. Gerrard’s remarks, he would point out that in
north-east Lancashire the Lingula mytiloides was not
found so much in the coal measure form as in the mill-
stone grit form. If one took the shales underlying the
rough rock running down into the Holme Valley, he
could get Lingula mytiloides by the million. There it
was distinctly characteristic of the millstone grit; it
was much more abundant in the millstone grit than in
the lower coal meaures, where it also occurred. It also
crept up into the middle coal measures. But in the
paper he referred to it in association with Orbiculoidea
and Productus; he was speaking of a definite fauna, of
which it was one of the constituents. As he knew it
in the Somerset field it went up into the Farrington
series. He had traced it even higher, where it became
very much impoverished in the shell; instead of being
| in. long, it was scarcely larger than a pin-head. The
Lingula of the Dover coal field was a lower coal measure
type compared with that in the Somerset field, and it
did not compare with the northern ones at all. Mr.
Lomax rather questioned the suggestion that animals
were better indices of time than plants, but he rather
gave his case away on that point when he said many
plants were so delicate that they were not fossilised,
and therefore not preserved. If some pages in a book
were so friable that they dropped out, one could not
read the full story written in that book. It was also a
consideration that the flora was more likely to be
carried a considerable distance away from the place
where it grew to a mudbank or sandbank, where it
became associated with other things with which during
life it had no connection. With animals, that did not
occur to the same extent. Therefore, of the two, the
fauna was the safer guide in determining stratigraphy
and the sequence of time.

RETAIL COAL PRICES.

We continue in this and followihg issues a digest of the
evidence given by witnesses heard before the Com-
mittee appointed by the Board of Trade to enquire into
the causes of the present rise in the retail price of coal
sold for domestic use.

Associated Coal Consumers.

Mr. F. Montague Smith gave evidence for the Associated
Coal Consumers, a co-operative society formed to supply
shareholders with coal on favourable conditions. He said
they had had to make a levy on their members to meet the
additional expenses they were put to. They were not
getting their contract tonnage from the collieries. In
January the crux was reached when the railway company
gave notice on January 1 to stop the “ wait order ” traffic
on January 4. They had about 200 wagons of their own,
and they found an indisposition on the part of the colliery
companies to let them have wagons. In the case of a
contract made with collieries for coal -at the pit, where it
does not state that a buyer should find wagons, it had been
decided by law that the obligation was on the colliery to
find wagons. That was the case of McKelvie n. the Pilsley
Colliery Company, which was tried at Derby Assizes.

Witness said the contract price for Yorkshire was 14s. 9d.
pit average, the rate to London 7s. 2d., the normal scale
for wagon hire Is., and he calculated to-day the loading,
screening, carting, clerkage, margin for bad debts, etc., as a
fair basis that a merchant should receive to cover this cost
was 6s.; that gave 28s. lid. per ton at contract rate. The
current average price was 23s. pit; the charges were the
same. That came to 37s. 2d. The average between the
contract and the current was therefore 33s., and the
merchants’ price was 36s. They were now buying other coal
(of different quality to that contracted for) at a premium
from those collieries with whom they had got contracts, and
getting premium coal, though they were not getting the
contract coal. Some collieries maintained their obligations,
but others did not. Witness read a letter from one colliery,
“ I am quite at liberty to sell in the open market the same
proportion of the reduced output as was originally provided
for.” That, he contended, was absolutely wrong according
to the custom of the trade. It was wrong for this reason,
that when the market was against the buyer, whether the
colliery was working short time or not, if the buyer failed
to order the coal he had contracted for and accept delivery
of it, he was liable to the colliery for the loss according to
market value. Whatever the output of the colliery might
be, their contract obligations should be satisfied first before
any coal was sold in the open market; and, indeed, for many
years, these contracts had generally been in favour of the
collieries. Of course, the circumstances were quite excep-
tional, and there was no doubt that the colliery owner had
his share of the brunt to bear like everybody else. He
should propose that the collieries were allowed Is. per ton
extra on all contracts, and that they should be called upon
to fulfil the contracts in full before selling in the open
market. He considered the present output of the collieries
was sufficient to meet all demands if the railways were able
to give better despatch, and barring labour troubles.
Passenger traffic should be reduced to an absolute minimum,
to free the lines and locomotives for goods and mineral
traffic generally. The prices tcf-day were not excessive for
this reason. Colliery prices were up 80 to 100 per cent, over
contract rates. Private wagon owners were asking 2s. to
3s. per ton against Is. railway scale. Then there was the
loss on the rolling stock the merchants hold. The wages of
coal porters were up 25 per cent. There was about 30 per
cent, increase in cost of carting, and against all this the
merchants had only 20 per cent, over last winter’s prices.
With regard to existing contracts, there should be something
like a maximum price fixed by the Government. With
regard to new contracts, they would have to deal with the
colliery owners. Personally, he anticipated that prices
would be very much higher after the war. He calculated
that miners’ wages would be up to about 250 per cent, on
the 1888 basis.

Evidence was given also on March 1 by Mr. J. Hall,
manager of the Royal Arsenal Co-operative Society. Witness
said there had been .a much heavier demand this year than
usual; consequently they had had to draw over contract
quantities, and for that they were charged the market rate.
They were having to pay practically double the contract
price for excess quantities. All this was obtained through
the Co-operative Wholesale Society. On the other hand,

they were not getting their full contract quantity, and he
mentioned a case of a colliery with which they had a con-
tract which was not supplying them, but proposing to charge
them double on the deficiency.

Further Evidence by Mr. G. C. Locket.

Mr. G. C. Locket was recalled on March 2. He said it
was difficult to say what proportion of the coal that was
being sold was contract coal, and what proportion was being
bought at current prices. So far as their own trade was
concerned, one-third they were buying under contracts, and
about two-thirds at current prices, or what might be called
excess prices, from collieries with which they had got con-
tracts. They , were getting that one-third within about
10 per cent. His experience was that,' so far as house coal
was concerned, there was no coal sold at -a uniform
price now. There were generally two forms of contract
with regard to house coal, that was, one which had a
summer and winter price, and that generally varied in
quantity; they would supply half as much again in the
winter months as in the summer months, but, of course,
the price in the winter was much higher than in the
summer. As a rule it was Is. more in the winter, and in
some cases Is. 6d. Collieries of recent years had been more
and more averse to making those contracts. The more usual
form of contracts, so far as household coal was concerned,
were those known as sliding-scale contracts; that is where
the price varies according to the selling price of coal in
London. If the price went up in London Is., the colliery
got 6d.; if the price fell Is., the price at the pit was reduced
by 6d. Witness said he had not been able to make a con-
tract at one uniform price throughout the year for house
coal for 15 years.

Witness said the price of about two-thirds of their coal
which they got at current prices was determined by negotia-
tion between the merchant and colliery.

A.s to the additional costs incurred by merchants in conse-
quence of the war, witness said it was estimated that these
extra expenses amounted to at least 2s. per ton, irrespective
of the advance in the price of coal at the pit.

Mr. Locket said there were generally the names of three
merchants inserted in the sliding-scale contracts, so that it
did not depend on any one particular merchant, and these
names differed; they were generally merchants whose adver-
tisements appear pretty regularly, such people as Rickett,
Cockerell and Company, Herbert Clarke, and Thomas Lea
and Company. There were generally three selected out of
half a dozen, and they varied in the different contracts.
Unless the prices of those three people who were named all
went up at the same time, the contract was not affected.
It must be a general advance. Selection of the names
would be made by the colliery owner entirely.

Witness mentioned that at the outbreak of war he wrote
to the Home Secretary and offered to place the resources of
the Coal Merchants’ Society entirely at his disposal. He
also set to work to make enquiries as to whether something
could be done to provide a supply of coal in London prac-
tically at the door of the poor. He consulted Mr. Small-
wood, a member of the London County Council and a coal
merchant as well, and asked whether he thought the London
County Council would agree to part of the playgrounds of
public schools being taken away for the time being, just as
temporary emergency, from the use of the children, and
devoted to the question of storing considerable quantities of
coal. He also saw Lord Dunluce, the secretary of the
Peabody Trust, and enlisted his sympathy, and he was
quite prepared to devote a very large portion of the court-
yards to storage of coal, and witness thought if they could
get perhaps 200,000 or 300,000 tons of coal put down in the
autumn, possibly financed by the Government or by the
London County Council, and all deposited in places where
the poor mostly reside, the poor could then come and fetch
their coal in the same way as they fetch coke from the
gasworks in 141b. coarse brown paper bags, and that that
would relieve the situation so far as the very poor were con-
cerned. He had got so far as to have enlisted a
certain amount of sympathy, when that, to his mind, most
unfortunate bargain of Sir Arthur Markham’s was made by
the Government, and it knocked the whole of witness’s
scheme on the head. They could have got the coal easily
in September and October; there was plenty of coal to be
had then. The export trade was stopped; the demand for
household to use in London and other places had not begun.
They would have got over the question of delivery, and that
would have relieved the situation enormously.

Mr. Locket said he thought the railway people had acted
rather foolishly. They had got a stereotyped idea in their
minds that the coal trade came last, after every other form
of traffic. They cannot disabuse their minds of that idea.
It was a perfect scandal the way excursion trains were
advertised, while London and other places were starved for
the necessities of life. Broadly speaking, the difficulty was
not to be found in the difficulty of the delivery of coal in
London, but the difficulty of getting the coal to deliver,
although their horses , and vans were working to their fullest
capacity. He did not think the bringing by rail to London
of coal that normally would come by sea had contributed
to a very large extent, because a great deal of the coal that
normally would come by sea was being brought up by rail
to barging stations and put into barges. The barging
stations on the river and canals were frightfully congested.

Witness said there was nothing like a standard form of
contract used between collieries and merchants. Every
colliery had its own form. They corresponded to a large
extent, but they were not verbally word for word. They
differed mostly in small details, the wording of strike
clauses, and things of that sort. There was nothing in
these contracts as to reducing deliveries on the ground that
the output had been reduced. The only ground on which
the collieries could do it at all was that it was due to causes
beyond their own control. Some of these strike clauses were
very widely framed : “ Strikes, accidents, or any circum-
stances beyond the control of the proprietors of the colliery.
The only power it gave them was to suspend the contract.
It had never been put as a legal question. The merchants
were much too busy to embark on law, and could not afford
at a time of pressure like this to risk their stopping
deliveries altogether; they were obliged to accept the posi-
tion.

Witness said there were two or three firms who had a
number of aliases. He thought the object was to get
different classes of clientele. When the Messrs. Brewis
Brothers started in London, Mr. George Brewis came up to
London from Newcastle with an intimate knowledge of the
Newcastle coal trade and started in London. He started
in business as the Tyne Main Coal Company, and worked
up a very large business. He was so successful that a good
many people imitated him. He carried on business in his

own name as Brewis Brothers, but he did not advertise in
that name; he did all his advertising under the name of the
Tyne Main Coal Company. His success induced a number
of imitators, and there was one man, F. B. Cameron, who
carried it to such an extent that he traded under 47 different
aliases at one time and with different prices. He only put
on his cards two or three different descriptions of coal, but
they would be at very widely differing prices, and the result
was that he got all sorts of classes of customers and did a
very large business, and eventually died in a bankrupt state.
But it was copied to such an extent that Messrs. Brewis
Brothers themselves had to start another firm under the
name of Carrick Davies and Partners for the purpose of
competing with this very cheap low-class trade. These
various influences on the Coal Exchange produced a very
complex state of things as regards fixing prices, and it had
this effect, that the colliery proprietors felt that they had
some right to express their opinion as to the price at which
coal should be sold in London, as being interested in these
sliding-scale contracts; and their agents would come round
and press the merchants to make a move in prices. There
was a certain indirect influence brought to bear; he did not
think it was very powerful, but still it had its effect. These
sliding-scale contracts were of comparatively recent date,
and he did not think they had been of advantage to the
trade. Witness agreed that practically the price for the
whole mf the coal in the London market was fixed by the
price for the non-contract coal plus cost—that is, under
present circumstances. Under normal circumstances, it was
based far more on the sliding-scale price, but the sliding-
scale price generally corresponded very closely with the
market price. It was quite an exceptional thing to see a
wide difference between them. Witness thought that a
large percentage of the trade done by the London merchants
in house coal was contract trade. It was quite a usual
thing with them to quote a price through the year to a
large consumer who would order 10 or 20 tons at a time.

Mr. Locket did not consider there would be any advantage
in pooling the trolleys and carting arrangements, because
when one was busy all were busy. Personally, he would
like to see the maximum prices fixed by the Government, as
an emergency measure. If there were a reasonable margin
on which they could work to cover expenses and costs and
give a reasonable profit, he should be very glad indeed. It
would save a great deal of trouble, anxiety and worry, if
they could get a fixed price at the colliery and a fixed price
at which they could sell. The fair way would be to take
the colliery price in June last, and the selling price in June
last, and take the difference between those two as the
normal difference; then, if the colliery price were fixed, and
a similar margin defined between that and the selling price,
they would get a margin which was certainly favourable to
the consumer, because the merchants generally expected to
get a larger margin in the winter as a rule than in the
summer, but to meet the national emergency he thought it
would be fair all round. Of coure, the difficulty was that
the colliery prices varied so much, but witness suggested a
margin of 15s. 3d. plus the extra expenses.

As to the point that the coal merchants continue to use
horses, and have not introduced motor traction, witness
said motors could be used up to a certain point profitably,
where they had deliveries in large quantities, and where
they could load and unload rapidly, but the initial capital
cost of a fleet of motors was so heavy, that they must be
utilised to the utmost of their capacity. The time taken
in loading a motor with sacks was so long, and the time
taken to discharge it was so long, that they could not get
enough out of them to make them pay. For ordinary
delivery, household trade, they found that the cost of
delivering by motor was at least 50 per cent, more than by
horses. If they could load it in bulk it paid, but it was
entirely a question of despatch.

Witness said the society comprised perhaps three-fourths
of the merchants in London, and probably -y^ths of the
sale, but amongst members of the society they had a large
number who did not sell at the advertised prices of the
principal merchants. They bought a rather cheaper coal, '
and sold at their own particular prices. Even if they
could get a firm combination of all the London merchants,
the colliery 'owners would then sell to merchants in other
towns. The London price had a bearing upon, the provincial
prices, but it - did not fix them. To ’coerce the colliery
owners they would want a combination of all the merchants
of England. As a general rule the nearest market was the
one which governs the price of coal from any particular
coal field. That arose from the question of working wagons ;
it would be much better to send wagons for a short distance
and get them backwards and forwards very rapidly.

The Chairman quoted ‘a statement made by the late Sir
James Inglis, the general manager of the Great Western
Biailway Company, in his Minority Report to the Royal
Commission on Canals, to the effect that over 80 per cent, of
the coal traffic on the London and North-Western railway
averaged less than 20 tons per consignment.

Witness said that would not apply to London, for their
consignments were in larger quantities than that. Witness
further complained that the railway companies were not
pooling their wagons; it would relieve the situation to some
extent if they would.

The Trolley Trade.

Messrs. Arthur Ernest Reed, J. V. Nicholls, and A.
Meehan were examined, as representatives of the Public
Control Department of the London County Council.

Mr. Reed stated that the Council is the local authority
under the Acts relating to Weights and Measures, including
the Weights and Measures Act of 1889, Part II. of which
relates to the sale of coal. That applied to all deliveries of
coal. The Council considered the question of the quality
of the coal under the provisions of an old Act of William IV.,
which provides a penalty if the coal merchant delivers
coal of another quality than he sets out to deliver, but the
Council really has not done a great deal in that direction.
There were nine coal officers, six in North London and three
in South London; their business is to visit shops where coal
is sold and to inspect vehicles. During the year 1914, 35,000
inspections were made by the coal officers, and 490 irregu-
larities were reported. During the year 42,119 tons of coal
were weighed by those coal officers, .and the total deficiency
reported amounted to 6 tons 18 cwt., or about 3^ cwt. in
every 1,000 tons. On the other hand, there was overweight
to the extent of 28 tons 12 cwt. There were, said witness,
three methods of buying coal; one was by ordering coal at
the coal merchants’ to be delivered in quantities of a
quarter-ton, half-a-ton, or a ton, or any considerable
amount, and the coal ordered in this way was usually paid
for at a rate per ton. The second method was by buying
coal from trolley men—that is, men who hawk coal in the