July 2, 1915.

THE COLLIERY GUARDIAN.

2$

Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire colliery owners
and workers have combined in the equipment of two
field convoys of motor ambulances for Red Cross work
in France. The gift will cost roughly £70,000.

In the Court of Appeal on Wednesday the hearing
in the case of Hooley v. the Butterley Iron and Coal
Company was concluded. The company were the
appellants, and the principle involved was as to
whether they were liable to pay minimum wages to a
man employed by a “butty.” Judgment was reserved.

Late on Wednesday night, after many conferences
with the Government, a settlement was reached in
the matter of the new wages agreement for the South
Wales area. The Government proposals, which
were accepted for the period of the war, included
the abolition of the maximum wage rate, and a new
basis wage- 50 per cent, higher than the old. A
further conference has been fixed to take place on
or before the 14th inst. to ratify the agreement.

On Tuesday, Sir George Askwith presided as
neutral chairman over the Scottish Coal Trade Con-
ciliation Board meeting to consider the miners’
application for a 50 per cent, increase on the 1888
standard. The chairman intimated that his decision
would be given shortly.

The employers and workmen in
The the South Wales coalfield have
Settlement the unenviable reputation of never
in being able to settle their differ-
Soilth Wales, onces until the eleventh hour, and
the agreement which expired on
Wednesday of this week was ratified but a short time
before its predecessor had ended, just as the new
agreement has been come to only when the sands
were fast running out. We are fain to admit,
however, that the situation on this occasion was
beset with difficulties of an exceptional nature,
and there is really great credit due to Mr. Runciman
that he has managed to effect a settlement without
seriously injuring the susceptibilities of either side
or directly attacking some of the so-called principles
that have actually formed the principal bar to
agreement.

For this crisis, although specifically aroused by a
difference of opinion on certain questions of fact, has
largely been psychological in its nature. A proof of
this is that the parties never really got to the point
of seriously discussing the terms advanced by the
miners. These, however, may be set forward, for
purposes of record, as follows:—

(1)	Raising of minimum from 35 per cent, to 65 per
cent, on standard rates of 1879.

(2)	Abolition of maximum.

(3)	Payment for afternoon and night work, at rate of
one and a-fifth for each shift worked.

(4)	Payment of day rates to all hauliers.

(5)	Abolition of the standard rates of 1879 and the
creation of a new standard of 50 per cent, higher.

(6)	The payment to all underground day wagemen of a
new standard rate 50 per cent, above, not the old
standard rates, but the Minimum Wage Act rates, except
where the old standard rates are higher than the new
Minimum Wage Act rates.

(7)	Payment to all surfacemen of a new minimum
standard rate of 5s. per day, and a minimum day wage of
5s. 6d. per day.

(8)	The fixing of 15s. 6d, per ton as the equivalent
selling price of a minimum wage rate of 65 per cent, on
the old 1879 standard or of a minimum of 10 per cent, on
the proposed new standard.

The terms now provisionally agreed to include a new
standard of 50 per cent, above the 1879 basis, the
abolition of the maximum, the payment of six turns
for five in the case of night men, equal pay for day
and night hauliers, and a 5s. rate for surfacemen.
It will be seen that the miners have not succeeded in
obtaining a 65 per cent, minimum and an alteration
in the equivalent selling price. These were the
specific demands to which the owners most strongly
objected. Their principal ground of objection,
however, was that they should not be called upon to
bind themselves by a high-standard agreement for a
period of three years, as required by the men.

This is where the great cleavage of opinion has
occurred, and, as it was regarded as a sine qud non by
the representatives of the workmen, it is not sur-
prising that not much progress was made towards a
discussion of details. The owners rightly apprehend
that at the conclusion of the war, when the Admiralty
contracts cease, and the normal activity of the world
has not yet been resumed, a great depression in trade

will take place, and they refused to commit themselves
to conditions that they might find it impossible
to carry out. To this was added a reasonable disin-
clination to elaborate the terms of the agreement
under the unprecedented circumstances of the day,
when it is difficult to anticipate the future course
of trade. Mr. Vernon Hartshorn, one of the most
able of the workmen’s representatives, himself put
this point of view most clearly in the early days of
the war, when he said :

The policy which should be adopted is that of the
maintenance of the ttatut quo in labour affairs, or, at any
rate, that no permanent agreements should be made until
the national danger is passed, and the working classes are
able to devote to their problems the full consideration
and the calm judgment that they require.

But there is much to be said for the workmen’s
point of view. They also realise that the con-
clusion of the war will not be the fittest moment
to come before the employers with demands upon
which, we may reasonably assume, they set consider-
able store, and there is the further consideration that
the failure to secure a three years’ agreement affects
the general policy of the Miners’ Federation of Great
Britain to make all agreements coterminous with a
a view to the eventual melting down of all agreements
into one.

Of much greater interest, however, than these diffi-
culties are the cross-currents that on this occasion
have surrounded the ultimate negotiations. If the
Minister of Munitions had apprehended this trouble
in South Wales, and had had the coal trade only to
consider, he would probably have been well advised
to keep back his Munitions Bill until after this week.
It is not easy to do more than conjecture the effect
of that Bill upon the negotiations that have now, we
trust, been brought to a successful conclusion. We
know that the miners have so far resisted the
blandishments of the Minister of Munitions to
come under the Bill, owing to their dislike of the
compulsory arbitration clause, and have asked the
Government to be content with guarantees instead.
The South Wales trouble has put this matter directly
to the test, and it may be variously argued that a
desire to prove that such guarantees are more than
empty breath may have induced the miners to allow
Mr. Runciman to succeed in a character that tech-
nically may not be that of an arbitrator ; or again,
that the knowledge that in the end the Government
would not brook the risk of a stoppage may have
prolonged the negotiations up to the last ditch—for
this is one of the failings of compulsory arbitration.

These conjectures may be multiplied at will; the
whole business has been rather like a sham-fight. We
knew all along that, whatever the scaremongers of
Fleet Street might say, no prolonged stoppage of
work would take place in South Wales; the country
would not stand that. The only point was how far the
responsible authorities would believe in the threats of
the leaders and so strengthen their power to bargain.
It is wise to emphasise this point for the benefit of
those who still remain restive ; the executive council of
the South Wales Miners’ Federation accepted the
Governments proposals by a narrow majority, and
then only “ as forming the basis for negotiations for a
settlement.” Otherwise, it is said, the majority would
have been the other way, and Mr. Hartshorn declares
that the executive has made it clear to the Government
that, unless the men’s demands are conceded, nothing
that the Government or the executive can do will
prevent a Welsh stoppage at the end of 14 days.

As to that we shall see ; the leaders at least must
know that nothing can be gained by carrying things
to this extreme.

They know better, and if this crisis has enabled
some of them to appreciate more rightly the national
importance of coal at this time, these alarums may
not have been altogether harmful; we are very
glad to see Mr. Thomas Richards, M.P., acknow-
ledge that he does not think “ any of us fully
appreciate the value to the country in the present
crisis of the exchange and barter with neutral
nations by the export of coal.” Those who sense-
lessly inveigh against the export of coal as a useless
and even vicious thing, should reflect upon Mr.
Asquith’s speech at the Guildhall the other day. He
told the people to economise on all those goods that

we have to buy from abroad, because we cannot now,
as in the past, pay for imports by exports, but by
gold alone. Our amateur economists may then
realise, perhaps, what our export trade in coal means
to the country—that it provides us with cheap wheat
and meat—and is not merely a money-spinner for

A great conference is to be held in
Profits	London next week, at which all

and	sections of the coal trade will be

Output. present, to discuss measures for
limiting the price of coal to the con-
sumer, and securing a continuity of supply from the
collieries.

It may be confidently asserted that any such scheme
must take into consideration, not only the question
of profits, but the equally important question of
output. Any proposal to restrict profits must proceed
upon sound premisses, and so far as we are able to
judge, there are only two that really merit this
description. The first is that it is proper to divert
from the individual to the State the increased emolu-
ments that may result from a state of war; the second
is that, in the interests of the public, prices should
be restricted within reasonable limits. At the present
moment the coal mining industry is being assailed on
both these grounds. And the point that we desire to
emphasise is that if the Government fails to recognise
that profits have been and are still being assailed
from yet another quarter, injustice as well as serious
injury will be the result. In other words, a large
share of the profits that the war has brought to the
coal trade has already been transferred to the work-
men, who, like Oliver Twist, are still asking for
more.

Now, it is a simple postulate that the best way to
lower the price of a commodity is to increase the
supply, and a fundamental condition of any scheme
to restrict the profits of industry that may be dictated
by exceptional circumstances is that it should
not result in a curtailment of the means of supply,
otherwise it would defeat its primary object; for
infinitely more important than any financial expe;
dient is the encouragement of production, where
the materials produced are articles of public and
national necessity such as coal; and it would be an
unprovidential measure to convert capital, at present
employed to the best advantage in the production of
coal and its by-products, in order to bolster up
some untried industry; there are other means of
obtaining the money for such purposes without
crippling important established industries.

All this may seem to be very elementary, but we
are not sure that it is by any means universally
recognised that it is not possible to produce wealth
by transferring capital from Peter to Paul. At the
meeting of Kynochs Limited this week, Mr. Arthur
Chamberlain advanced the very sound argument
that it was impossible by any system of limitation of
profits to produce more munitions of war, and in this
direction he pointed to the indifferent returns
obtained from State-owned factories. Lord Aber-
conway used almost the same words at a meeting on
the same day, and it is quite a fair illustration to
take, for the heavier the hand placed by the State
upon the profits of private enterprises, the more
nearly do those concerns approximate to the condi-
tion of State ownership. Where the measure is
incomplete and the State touches the profits without
concerning itself with questions of management and
organisation, the position may easily be rendered
worse, for to take one item in the cost sheet alone,
a firm may be unable to march with the times by
the replacement of worn-out machinery and the
introduction of new and efficient methods of produc-
tion which are the principal means of increasing the
rational output, if the turnover is handled without
intelligence.

As regards the limitation of profits by price
restrictions, at the time of writing we are not
acquainted with the precise nature of Mr. Runciman’s
plan. If, however, the proposal be to fix a maximum
price for certain standard grades of coal, in which an
allowance shall be made for the increase in working
costs, we trust that there will be a full recognition of
the consequences entailed by such a step. In the