370

THE COLLIERY GUARDIAN.

August 20, 1915.

have to meet whatever competition there may be from other
districts. Then we have no association which embraces the
whole of the producers of our district, and a man may not
be in the association. The desire of the association is to
maintain a certain price, but if he has a neighbour who is
outside the association next door to him selling at a low
price, he cannot possibly keep up to it. We have no associa-
tion with hard-and-fast rules governing coal prices, but we
have informal discussions. We decide to try and get certain
prices. If we cannot get them we have to meet the position.
There is no attempt to govern the open market. We settle,
perhaps, in April or May, sometimes in early June, as to
what prices we shall ask for contracts over the forthcoming
12 months. We publish our contract prices and the
merchants come in and purchase. This year there will be
the natural falling off in the demand for house coal in the
summer months, but I do not think it will be so pronounced
as usual, but there ought to be no difficulty in making good
the supply, but the extra expenses would necessitate a rise
in contract prices. My expectation is that the advance in
price will be approximately 4s. to 5s. per ton for house coal.
With regard to manufacturing coal, we can at the present
time make contracts at 5s. per ton advance. Our position
at the present time is that we may be offered contracts at
5s. a ton advance, but we cannot take them, because we
have not got the coal. We have contracts expiring now
which we have to let drop because we have not got the coal
to meet them. With regard to manufacturing coal, contracts
are made at very much shorter periods.sometimes than for
house coal, three, six, nine, or 12 months.

With respect to wagons, witness pointed out that their
contract notes for the London district put the responsibility
for the supply of wagons on to their customers. “ We agree
to supply you in your own wagons.” Most of their cus-
tomers owned wagons, and sent them for the coal they bought.
The war had had a serious effect on the supply of wagons,
but they perhaps did not feel it so severely as some other
collieries, as they had 5,000 wagons of their own. These
were usually employed in carrying coal to the port of ship-
ment. It was only because the shipping trade had fallen off
that they had had this large number of wagons available for
other purposes. Witness continued : The railway companies
have had fewer wagons available for coal traffic,
and customers’ wagons have done a less number of
journeys per month. Before the war wagons could be
hired for 3s. to 3s. 3d. a week. I have since been offered
4s. 6d. per week for any wagons we might have to spare. A
wagon running regularly between a London depot and a
colliery has, to my knowledge, done five journeys in a month.
The average would exceed three journeys, but would perhaps
hardly exceed four; if sent to one colliery and then to
another, three journeys would be a fairly good average, and
I think if a wagon did two journeys per month it should
cover expenses, and make a small profit. But we have been
so well provided with wagons that it has not been necessary
for us to follow the wagon position so much, and we have
not lost time at the collieries through any railway block. We
have had some trouble at times, but we have fairly large
sidings at most of our collieries, and it has never reached
such a point that we have had to lose output. Our
customers, however, have told me that coal has taken six
weeks to get from our collieries to the depots.

Causes of the Trouble.

Asked to give an opinion as to what had led to the present
high retail prices, Mr. Westlake said : There is the increase
in cost of getting coal, the increase in cost to the merchants
in delivering coal, including wages, horse, corn, decreased
wagon earnings, etc., the impossibility of holding large stocks
in London depots, and the dependence of the London coal
trade on regular deliveries by rail. Any dislocation of rail-
way working which extends over a week or two, must cause
a shortage. Reserves cannot be held in London. The depots
cannot hold enough coal to cover any long sustained cessa-
tion of supplies. The maximum capacity of the London
depots would hardly be a week’s supply for London. The
loss of output has been the most important cause leading to
high prices, and I attribute a good deal to panic buying,
first on the part of the general public, and then on the part
of the merchants. Then the newspapers have done more
harm than good by their scare headlines. They have led the
consumer to believe that there was a coal famine, and they
have all ordered more than they actually wanted for the
time being. Any temporary scarcity has a quicker and more
serious effect in London than it would have in a town that
was provided with reasonable storage accommodation at its
coal depots. There has not been, as far as I can gather, any
real difficulty in the country. I do not think prices have
risen in the country to anything like the proportion that they
have in London. Frequently a London merchant has put
down stock in the summer time, and has had to pick, it up at
an actual loss. The London prices are subject to greater
fluctuations than in other big centres. I should say the
London prices are cheaper proportionately in the summer and
dearer in the winter. The country prices are more stable.
The sliding scale contractor starts from a lower price than
the fixed contract, and in normal years it almost invariably
works out that he does pay a lower price throughout the 12
months. That is the reason I do not like sliding scale con-
tracts. When I talk about 5s. per ton advance, I do not
talk about 5s. per ton advance on our whole output. Of
these household pits at Staveley, only 50 per cent, is placed
on the house coal market, the balance of it is coked. With
regard to the 5s. per ton on house coal prices, assuming
there is no advance at all on the coking coal, there is only
2s. 6d. a ton on the total output of the pit.

Asked whether he could draw a distinct line between the
industrial and the household coal, witness said they had some
coal that was interchangeable. It formed perhaps 20 per
cent, of their output, either for steam raising purposes or for
house coal. Mr. Westlake said the tendency recently had
been to reduce the use of coal cutters, as their experience had
not been altogether satisfactory with some of their recent
experiments in that line.

Witness said that since last summer they had advanced
their open market prices by 9s. or 10s. per ton. If any
London merchant was sufficiently unwise last June to decide
to stay in the open market, he had had a very unhappy
experience. But he thought that 75 per cent, at least must
have been bought, taking London all round, and that was
perhaps a low figure. Witness here pointed out that the 10
per cent, on the house coal would probably represent less than
5 per cent, of their total output. He added that their export
trade had fallen off a good deal. They sold fairly largely to
Germany in normal years a quantity of hard cobbles. That
was the class of coal which he had described as being inter-
changeable as either manufacturing or house coal. Now that
Germany was no longer taking the coal, they had had that

much available for the London market. In fact, they would
not have had 10 per cent, of free coal had not it been for that.
They had had the advantage of that and of the trucks which
conveyed the steam coal to Grimsby.

Mr. Westlake said the cost of timber varied very much
according to the pit. Some pits with bad roofs swallowed an
immense amount of timber. The highest he had heard of
had been Is. 6d. per ton in normal times, but that was not
at all indicative of the district. He should think from
perhaps 4d. to 8d. was something like the figure. The cost of
getting the timber was now excessive, and the English
timber was nothing like as effective.

Board of Trade Evidence.

On March 23, 1915, evidence was given by Mr. C.
Hipwood and Mr. H. I’. Evebbtt, connected with the
Marine Department of the Board of Trade, in regard to the
use of interned vessels in the coal trade. Mr. Hipwood con-
sidered that there were two main classes of reasons for
following the market rates for these ships, the first being the
difficulty of discriminating between the very numerous and
pressing applications they would have for tonnage at these
specially low rates; and, secondly, the difficulty of securing
that this benefit should go to the consumer, and should not be
intercepted on its way. In the case of the gas companies,
with their sliding scale arrangements, if they took full cargoes
and they were the only people concerned, there would be no

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Coaling Tip at Barry Docks.







■difficulty at all; they could give them boats at simply the
cost of running them, because practically the whole of the
benefits would go straight to the gas consumer. But, of
course, the gas companies were by no means the only people,
and in the case of the people who were supplied by con-
tractors, how were they to prevent someone in between inter-
cepting it? It would simply be a present to the man who
was handling the coal. It was extremely difficult to
guarantee that any benefit of this kind would go to the con-
sumer, and that the consumer should get, if not all, at least
the major part of it. When they looked at the gas com-
panies’ case as it was put before the Committee bv Mr.
Watson, it looked absolutely unanswerable when taken by
itself. The gas companies whose steamers were comman-
deered were badly hit, but the ordinary ship owner was hit
in exactly the same way. There might be a distinction that
the people who were really hit in the case of the gas com-
panies were not the gas companies, but the people of London ;
but although it was quite true that the ship owner had not
got direct customers in the same way as a gas company had,
yet he had indirect customers, and his indirect customers had
got to suffer. Then, again, the claims of Brighton,
Plymouth, and other south coast towns, could not be put
aside in favour of those of London entirely. London's,
although a very pressing case, was not the only case which
made demands on the Government for tonnage.

IMPROVED COAL-SHIPPING FACILI-
TIES AT THE BARRY DOCKS.

As briefly mentioned on page 335 of the last issue of
the Colliery Guardian, the first of the six new coaling
tips which the Barry Railway Company have had under
construction for some time past was put into service
during the week ended August 7, when the s.s. “ Sheaf
Field,” one of the fleet of Messrs. Cory Brothers and
Company, was loaded.

These tips which, it is claimed, will rank as probably
the most up-to-date in service in this country, are of
two types, fixed and movable, and they are so arranged
that it will be possible to have two tips working into a
ship simultaneously. They have been designed to deal
with wagons of 20 tons capacity, giving a gross load on
the cradle of 30 tons, and with this load they will lift
at the rate of 180 ft. per minute to a height of 60 ft.,
so that the highest ships will be quite conveniently
loaded or bunkered. The cylinders are so arranged that if









it is not necessary to lift a 20 ton wagon, ordinary 10 and
12 ton wagons may be dealt with at the same speeds,
with a proportionate economy in the power required.
Each tip will have a 5-ton anti-breakage crane fitted
with the Barry Railway Company’s special design of
anti-breakage box, and also with a 3-ton small coal crane
which will be capable of loading the screenings from
the deck of the ship and discharging it through a hopper
placed on the quay wall.

In addition to the higher speed and larger capacity
the tips have several other interesting features. The
cradle, instead of being worked direct by the rams, is
suspended by wire ropes working over large overhead
pulleys, giving an easy and steady movement of the
cradle. The tipping of the table is performed by another
cylinder, the ram of which also operates through wire
ropes, while the chute is manipulated by a special three-
cylinder hydraulic engine placed on the top of the
structure. By means of an ingenious arrangement of
clutches the same engine raises and lowers the top of