October 8, 1915.

THE COLLIERY GUARDIAN.

739

COAL MINING ORGANISATION
COMMITTEE.

DIGEST OF THE EVIDENCE.

(Continued from page 675.J

Mr. Roslyn Holiday.

Evidence was given on April 15 by Mr. Roslyn Holiday,
general manager of the Ackton Hall Colliery, representing
the West Yorkshire Coal Owners’ Association, which has an
output of 13 million tons per annum. He said the main cause
of the depreciation in the output was the number of men
who have joined the Forces. The enlistment was most
pronounced amongst the underground men. The reduction
in the number of persons employed was 10‘8 per cent., and
reduction in output only 6-2 per cent. One reason was that
in the earlier months of the war the pits were working short
time, and, as invariably followed after a period like that, the
men worked better. He also thought there was the fact
that a number had enlisted and the men did work better.
There was very considerable patriotic feeling in the district.
The amount of absenteeism had decreased, and the men had
been very generous indeed in their contributions towards the
dependants of those who had gone away; it meant their
generosity had extended to working rather well to make up.
The absenteeism in the six months fell from on the average
20-5 per cent, down to 18*75 per cent. Those figures were
taken on three typical pits in the eastern division of West
Yorkshire. They always found that in the quarter preceding
Christmas the percentage of absenteeism decreased by 2 or 3
per cent., and immediately after Christmas, in the three
months succeeding, it went up again. On Mondays,
Wednesdays and Saturdays there was not much to choose
between at the collieries that paid on Friday. That, is, they
made up on Tuesday night. Where they made up to
Wednesday, they paid on the Saturday, so that they got
rather more men to attend on the Saturday. In a typical
case the average absenteeism was 25 per cent, for the month
of March this year. Saturdays was the highest, 28*41 per
cent.; Mondays, 28*11; Wednesdays, 28*1; Thursdays, 26-1;
Fridays, pay day, 21; and Tuesdays, making-up day, 18'38
That was for hewers only. That class showed the heaviest
absenteeism. In the same period, the percentage of absen-
teeism in the datallers, hauliers, and all the rest of the under-
ground men, was just about half, except on Mondays, when
it was nearly the same. At that colliery, if all turned up,
they dealt with them, as they had a lot of pit room. Witness
said there was a variety of causes for the absenteeism, but he
thought the chief was that the earning power of the men was
greater than it was, and there were more inducements or
opportunities for taking leisure; and when they took leisure
the attractions were perhaps greater in the West Riding.
There were the large towns, and, particularly of recent years,
the facilities for getting about had 'become very much greater.
They had no serious variation in the demand. In latter
wars, since the permissible illuminating power of gas was
lowered, it had brought Yorkshire small coal in as available
for gas works, of which a large amount used to be used for
house purposes and for mills. Formerly, in the summer,
when the house trade was reduced, the pits worked less, and
also the requirements for the engine fuel were less, because
of the holidays and local feasts, which reduced the amount
of time worked at the mills. But since the softer coals could
be used for gas making purposes, it had very much steadied
the demand, so that there was much more time worked in
summer now than there used to be. In witness’s opinion, the
wages were not so high in West Yorkshire as in South York-
shire. But where the families had girls working in the mills
to any considerable extent, that undoubtedly affected the
earnings going into the house in the area which is amongst
the manufacturing towns ; when the mills were working badly,
the percentage of absenteeism was not so great as when the
mills were working well, because it meant a shortage of
money coming into the house. However, the collieries in
regard to which he had given figures were not in that area.
On the other hand, there were determining factors in the other
case, namely, that in all that area the seams were very much
thinner to work, and the output was more difficult to obtain,
because of the thinness of the seams. One of the reasons
.why a man would not leave the thin seam areas and come to
where it was easier to get coal in the thick ones, was that
those men. who had families of daughters could do better by
remaining in the areas where the daughters could work.

Witness’s opinion was that drink did not play a great part.
It was more the facilities for the leisure-loving propensities
that had been developed. But, he added, although a man
may have come to work, his earning power may have been
prejudiced by his staying out too late, quite apart from the
quantity of actual drink. The clubs are often open at 12 at
night, and you see them turn out of the clubs. The fact has
been noticed in the pits, particularly since the clubs were
brought down to the same hours as the public houses, that
the men are in better condition for work. There are some
men who will almost habitually drink to excess; but the
public house is under supervision in a way the club is not.
Therefore, if the club were restricted even more than the
public house, the man could still get his drink at the public
house, but there would be more supervision. To a large
extent absenteeism is within the man’s control. I mean it
is not altogether due to causes beyond his control, like the
illness of himself, illness of relatives, etc. What I feel
myself is, that if the real need of the country could be pointed
out to the man, and he realised there was a need for him
to work more time, and he truly did realise it, and did not
think he was being exploited, I think the remedy would come;
but I do feel that the men are not aware that there is any
special need. The effect of the appeal to the men for Easter
was far better than ever we expected, particularly in this
respect. There is reason also for a further restriction in
regard to public houses and clubs, say, on Saturday and
Sunday. My personal opinion is that if, by the offer of a
bonus, the percentage of absenteeism could be reduced from
what it is now down to somewhere about 9 or 10 per cent., it
would be worth it; but- I am afraid I have no hope that it
would, because I cannot see that the mere money effect would
induce them. There would be extreme difficulty in getting
at the principle of a bonus which would secure the additional
work that is desired. Mr. Nimmo’s proposed “ dragging
bonus ” is more likely to obtain the desired effect than any
other.

Mr. Holiday said the West Yorkshire owners thought that
no gain could be got from suspension of the Eight Hours
Act unless the men were willing. There could not be any
compulsion about it. But as in their district eight hours for
coal getters was practically the time before the Eight Hours
Act came in, and the only effect on the coal getter was that

he could not stay in the pit longer, and get his place ready,
it would not affect him very much, but it would affect other
classes of labour. If the Eight Hours Act were completely
suspended in the district, as if it did not exist for the time
being, there would be very little change in conditions,
because previously the coal getter only worked for eight hours,
with the exception of those who got their places ready for the
next day where it was necessary. They would be at liberty
to do that if they wanted, but there would be no compulsion
about it. There never was. The good collier used to stay
and get his place ready, or would go earlier and get his place
ready. He continued : Supposing it suited other districts,
or it was better only to apply it to certain classes of men,
there are certain classes with regard to whom we particularly
look for some benefit being derived from the suspension, and
we should not object to its not being suspended with regard
to others. We would suspend it altogether as far as we are
concerned. It could be taken advantage of just as circum-
stances permitted. Before, instead of being tied down abso-
lutely by the clock, as they are now, there was a little elas-
ticity. Older men, whose getting ability was perhaps not
quite as great as the younger men,.have come down, say,
half-an-hour earlier, and have got their place ready. They
are apparently more regular. I would pay at a higher rate
for the overtime worked. I think I ought to mention this.
The men put on their own packs. If a man is getting and
filling coal while the pit is winding, and that can go out,
there is still some packing that he can do, which he gets
paid for, and it puts his place in order. Again, a suspension
of the Eight Hours Act would enable the collier, owing to
the ripping shift being able to shift the muck, to begin filling
the coal straight away, instead of first having to fill two or
three tubs of muck.

Witness also referred to the shortage of men in the work-
shops. There was a shortage not only due to enlistment, but
the effect of it was cumulative. The enlistment, showed the
number who had enlisted, but it did not show the shortage,
because so many had been taken away from the workshops
to the armament and munitions works.

On the subject of export, Mr. Holiday said : About 25 to 30
per cent, of the coal raised in the West Riding is exported.
Before the war it was going to France, Belgium, Germany,
Hamburg, and some to the Baltic, but not a large quantity
—Scandinavia, Sweden, and Denmark. France is now
taking much more. The coal exported is a coal most of
which in this country is second-class house coal, or you
might even say third-class house coal, but over there it is
used as house coal, and -also gas nuts. In our district the
contracts are not made direct through the foreign buyer,
but they are made through an exporter. When the supplies
were cut off through the war it was thrown on our hands;
but it enabled us to keep up with our contracts in London.
A certain amount of house coal, not the lowest quality, that
was going over to Germany and Belgium, was then diverted
to keep up with our house coal contracts. But it did not
leave us with free coal on the market. Very considerable
quantities have been supplied from West Yorkshire to the
Admiralty by rail to Chatham. Any coal that we have
supplied previously to the Admiralty ha>s always gone by
boat; but this has gone by rail. If exports were restricted,
I do not know where we should look for a market for our
coal. Our difficulty just now is that the Admiralty are not
taking the coal, and we are having to try and find markets.
The West Yorkshire coal will not bear stacking. It both
fires and falls. The stopping of exports to neutrals would
not so seriously affect us as some districts with a much
larger percentage of export trade. We had been supplying
to France before, but after war broke out we began to
supply to other markets in France which had not been
supplied before, and also the same people who had bought
before began to buy increased quantities. Certain gas
companies in France used to take so much of our coal and
so much German coal. The West Yorkshire coal was richer
in gas, but they got the German coal cheaper and they
mixed the English coal with it and made a mixture of the
two. When their supply of German coal was cut off, they
sought to make it up out of English coal only. The exporter
who exported to Germany with whom we made contracts,
ultimately diverted that trade to France. We had a contract
with him, and we had to supply that contract not as to a
particular place, but a contract to supply to him. Some of the
coal that goes to France is a coal that is not of a high
quality. There are certain seams worked in West Yorkshire
that are not of the best quality, and the people living in
this country who can get access to the better seams do not
want it, so we export it. In Yorkshire I do not think
there is a real scarcity of coal, certainly in West Yorkshire
itself; because there is a large manufacturing demand close
to the collieries and they are just about able to keep pace
with that. The price .is fairly high. Of course that is con-
trolled by anyone who has any free coal. If it were all kept
in West Yorkshire it would supply it, and there would not
be a rise in price; but in other districts they are asking
for coal, and .it is only free coal that you can dispose of to
them. I mean that Yorkshire is in a position to supply its
normal market in Yorkshire.

Witness said working costs had gone up on some seams,
that is the easier seams, 9d. or lOd.; but in one seam it had
gone up Is. 6d. per ton. In West Yorkshire the output had
receded of recent years, and there were no new coal fields
being opened up. The cost per ton to carry coal from
the district to London by rail was 7s. 3d. a ton railway
freight, plus Is. 3d. per ton wagon hire. It was 6d. a ton
to Goole, wagon hire, and the freightage from Goole to
London by ship previous to the war was about 4s. 6d.
The man who took it at Goole by ship had to pay in
freightage on the ship 4s. 6d., and then he had to put it on
to barge in some cases to go by canal to the different points
to which it went. He could not deliver straight from
the ship to the consumer; whereas in the case oi rail, he
could send the wagon as a wagon load direct to a goods
station nearest to his consumer, and cart it from there. So
that there were other costs on to the 4s. 6d. which had to be
paid, in order to get it to the consumer.

Mr. Holiday again laid stress on the effect of taking men
away from the workshops at the collieries. He said in his
own experience they could not get mechanics. One did not
like to advertise for good men, because one was advertising
in competition with the armament works. For instance,
there were coal cutters’ mechanics needed to keep machines
in repair. The total number of mechanics was really very
small in proportion to the number of men employed, and they
always wanted a certain number to keep pace with the current
repairs. If the number was less than was really requisite,
they were gradually getting into a worse and worse condi-
tion. The machinery ran all right for a time; but if a stitch
in time was not done, there were stoppages. They might
have a day’s stoppage through a breakage in the haulage

machinery, or other machinery, which might lose an output
far greater than a number of colliers being taken away. The
effect of any shortage there was cumulative. If, through a
breakdown, they had to revert from machine cutting to hand
getting, the ratio of efficiency was about 28 to 6. Supposing
they had six men who were working filling in connection with
the coal face, it would be necessary to have 28 men if they
were hand getting coal to keep the face going at the same rate.

Mr. Hugh Bramwell.

Mr. Hugh Bramwell gave further evidence on April 16.
Witness said there were 12 holidays in a year that were
arranged between the workmen and the owners as recognised
holidays. There were three at Easter, three at Christmas,
three at Whitsuntide, and three in August. But a great
many of the men took a fortnight’s holiday on their own in
the summer time. With regard to the Eight Hours Act, he
did not think it would be an alleviation if the Act were sus-
pended in respect of a particular class of men and not the
coal getters, as it was the coal getters who governed the pro-
duction. The coal getter was the repairer in his working place.
All they wanted was to give a coal getter the option of staying
in for a little longer beyond the fixed hours. They would not
give an increased rate of pay for overtime; he was a con-
tractor, a coal getter, and they would not pay him any over-
time for that. He would simply benefit by getting so much
coal for the extra time he was in. Nor did he advocate the
institution of some form of bonus for regular attendance at
work, as he did not think it would do any good.

Witness said their roads were well laid with heavy rails,
but it was extremely difficult to keep them even and in reason-
ably good repair. That was the reason why colliery
managers did not like to ride the men in. He agreed that
the greatest opposition to the prohibition of run riders
emanated from South Wales. A fortnight or so previously
they had two districts stopped for a day or two in one of the
pits because they had no rider. If the journey of trams got
off the road, there was no man in charge of it. The engine-
man could not tell for a moment or so that it was off the
road, and it went bumping on, and pulled out the timbers,
and brought the whole thing down. When they had a rider
they used to save all accidents of that sort. Immediately a
journey got off the line it was signalled and stopped.

Witness said the vast proportion of their export was
to our Allies, the British Government, and the foreign
coaling stations. South America was also an impor-
tant customer. The principal factor at present in South
Wales was the extraordinary Admiralty demand. It had
upset everything. They were not only supplying the English
Admiralty, but the English Admiralty were buying practi-
cally for the supply of France. The coal supplied by the
British Admiralty to the French Admiralty would not be
included in the export figures to France. At the beginning
of the war they rushed a whole lot of coal and other things
up to Archangel to go to Russia.

Mr. Bramwell said there were three or four collieries in
one part of the coal field that happened to have a coal
which was a suitable house coal, and it was sent to London.
No. 2 and 3 Rhondda had household coal; at least, they
called it house coal down there, but they did not make really
good house coal. If the export was to some extent cut down
in South Wales, a certain amount might be diverted to
London. A deal of the South Wales coal was supplied to
the electricity works in London by rail, and also, he thought,
by sea. He did not know how the inland demand for Welsh
coal could be enhanced. The general opinion was that a
stoppage of the exports would be most disastrous to South
Wales—even a limitation of the exports.

Witness pointed out that the contracted coal in South
Wales was very largely to foreign buyers; and the sellers
of coat in Wales would have to supply those buyers at the
end of the war with every ton of coal they had contracted
for. Now, even the Admiralty collieries had large quantities
of coal held up against them, that they would have to supply
when the war is ended. He afterwards put in some figures
with regard to the actual position as to the prices of coal
showing the differences in the ascertained figures in certain
periods. He said : The figures are above or below the price
for the three months ending June 30, 1914, that is, the
three months preceding the war. Now, for the three months
ending September 30, the price of large coal was 10* 33d.
above the pre-war period, and the price of small coal was
Is. 2'97d. below the price of small coal in the pre-war
period. There was no market for small coal at that time.
We were tipping into the fields, simply to get large coal
for the Admiralty. Then for the three months ending
December 31, 1914, large coal was 10-02d. above the pre-
war period; the small coal was Is. 5*46d. below the pre-war
period. Then for the two months ending February 28,
1915, the large coal price is Is. 2-96d. above the pre-war
period; so that small coal has gone up; the whole of the
small coal has been taken up, and is probably being used
at the boilers of the collieries. Every ounce has been
scraped up and used for boiler firing.

Speaking about the stint, witness said : The same thing
applied previous to the passing of the Eight Hours Act. In
fact, that was the principal argument of the men down
in South Wales for the Eight Hours Act; that they could
produce just as much in the eight hours as they did pre-
viously in the 94 hours, and for a month or two after the
Eight Hours Act came in they did it pretty well, but it all
disappeared in a very short time. I can give you the actual
effect of the Eight Hours Act on a particular group of
collieries. It was taken out some months after the coming
into force of the Eight Hours Act. The effect at this group
of collieries was that the gross output was reduced by 6T3
per cent. To make up that reduced output, the day-wage
men engaged in transport and repairs had to be increased
by 6T5 per cent. The coal getters remained the same. The
output per man employed was reduced by 9'03 per cent., and
the cost of production was increased by 3'71 per cent. That
was the effect on one group of collieries which have an output
of a million tons a year. I do not think the Miners’
Federation, as a federation, encourage the stint at all in the
steam coal collieries and the Glamorganshire collieries.

In conclusion, witness said he was absolutely against cur-
tailing the exports from South Wales; but, if it was done, it
would be preferably done, and do less damage, by a duty
being put on export coal. Even if they did not stop it, they
would get money into the country from it: because somebody
w’ould have to pay the duty, and he thought the foreigner
would have to pay it. It naturally raised the point as to
whether there should be differentiation between one country
and another, between one mining district and another, or one
kind of coal and another. It was always a very moot point
in South Wales who paid the extra Is. The colliery owners
paid it for a time, then he thought the*shippers paid it, and
then eventually the consumers paid it. The principal outcry