October 29, 1915. THE COLLIERY GUARDIAN. 877 I think at very urgent times like the present, if we could bring pressure to bear on these men who do not attend their work, a large number more would come now, but in ordi- nary times they would feel they were not disposed to come on a Saturday. They regard it not so much as a holiday as that it is not worth while coming 20 or 30 miles by train for four hours’ work. I have found by figures that taking the output at 33 millions, which is the total output of the county, if that 5 per cent, could be induced to work, it would represent an additional 1,684,867 tons per annum, about half the reduction. Witness described the efforts that had been made to secure attendance at Easter. He said the result was remarkable. In their own pits, where they raised an output at the present time of about 7,300 tons per day on the average, they raised on Easter Monday over 6,000 tons, and the men attended their work at many of the collieries almost to the same extent as in ordinary times. He thought it showed that if only men could be brought to realise the position, they were most anxious to do everything they possibly could to 'assist. They seemed to let nothing stand in the way. If it were put before them plainly what the urgency of the position was, they came forward at once and sacrificed everything to do all they could to assist. What he would suggest with regard to the absenteeism was that there should be an appeal to the representatives of the men to assist the colliery managers all they possibly could to bring home to the men the importance at the present time of attending to work as much as they possibly could. As to a war bonus, he did not know that the owners had very much to give out in the way of bonuses, and he did not altogether agree with the bonus system. If bonuses were given, it was very often found that the party who got the bonus was the man who had attended .regularly, and it would not affect those who did not come. The percentage of men that attended regularly was by far the largest. He thought there were at least 65 per cent, of the men who attended regularly, who never lost a day unless it was unavoidable. With regard to the Eight Hours Act, witness said he had discussed this question very fully with the men, and he was of the opinion it would not assist in any way at the present time if the eight hours were increased by any fixed period per day. Continuing, he said : Supposing a clause were brought into force, allowing the working of the extra hour for 60 days, I do not think it would assist in getting any more coal. It would complicate matters. It would make conditions extremely difficult in our district. We should first have to consider the question of arranging for the day men staying so as to get away the extra coal from the colliers, and possibly it would cause a great deal of dissatisfaction and upheaval. We work principally in Derbyshire on one coal winding shift, one shift in the afternoon at the majority of the pits, where we have a few men getting coal in places which we want particularly to go forward, and a night shift repairing entirely. The afternoon shift is generally employed in the main by driving forward certain gates which we want particu- larly to get out, and in bringing coal from stalls which are full, and putting it on the main haulage roads, and then putting back empties for the men to start with in the morn- ing. The night shift is employed entirely in repairing. That is the general custom in Derbyshire; there are a few excep- tions. What I am in favour of is that there should be at the present time, if I might term it so, a relaxation of the Eight Hours Act, that is, what one witness has called departmental moderation. The Act should be suspended so that the men in each district could agree to certain methods of working which would not be strictly in accordance with the Act as it is now, but there should not be a general alteration of the whole system of working. In Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, prior to the Eight Hours Act, it was always customary for a large number of the colliers in the faces to fill up their tubs after the coal winding shift of the day had finished, so as to leave in the stalls the four tubs full of coal. The afternoon shift that came on used to change those tubs, bring the tubs of full coal back to the haulage road, and take in the empties, so that the miner, when he came in the morning, had his four empties to start with. Another thing that a large number of miners in Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire used to do was that on the Friday night they used to come back and do their ripping and packing on that night, and stay in for the half shift on Saturday and fill coal. I believe that at the present moment there might be a relaxation or suspension of the Act, so that each district might be allowed to work out its own ends, in the way that suited the particular district. It would hardly affect the working arrangements in the dis- trict. Another very great hardship at the present time with the men was that every day they had to have an interval between leaving and returning to work of 16 hours; so that if they were to fix a period, that would not relieve that difficulty at all. Mr. Mitton, still referring to the hours of labour, said :— I would like to give an instance of some conversations I have had with some miners. I was down one of our own pits last Thursday, and I was talking to a miner in the coal face. At Butterley we are iron and steel makers, as well ,as collieries. At our iron and steel works we are work- ing 70 and 75 hours a week. The men are working a large number of nights and a large number of Sundays as well. This miner .said to me : At the present time there is a large call for coal, and he could not understand why the miners were restricted to hours of working when all the other trades of the Butterley Works were allowed to work overtime if they liked. I said to him : “ Supposing we were to put the Eight Hours Act on one side just for the present, what would you do? ” He said : “ There are lots of us would stay and fill the gang of coal after 3 o’clock ”—3 o’clock being the time they knock off—“ like we did in the past. There are lots of men would not object to going back on the Friday nights to do their rippings and packings, just at the present time, to get a little extra coal for the country ” ; and he said : “ I cannot understand why we are not allowed to work extra time now, the same as all these other works.” That is not the opinion of one; but it is the feeling of a large number of men whom I constantly come in contact with. Witness added that his views were shared by the coal owners in Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire. It would, he said, be left optional with the men, but we should give the men the opportunity of doing their extra bit of work at the present time for the country, if they wished to do it. That is the view on this question which is held throughout Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire by the owners’ section, that it would be better to suspend the Act than fix any limit of time. Witness next dealt with the question of drink. He said : Drinking in Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire amongst the miners at present is not excessive. There is one thing which we all rather feel; and that is, we do think if there was a restriction of the hours of closing public houses in Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, it would be a good thing, because if at the present time the public houses were closed, say, at 9 o’clock in the evening, it would probably have a tendency to encourage some of those 5 per cent, to get up and go to work in the morning. There is no doubt at all that there are men who take a drop too much, and neglect their work through oversleeping in the morning. At the present time the tendency is less than usual, if anything. In the restriction I would certainly include clubs. Some of the colliery owners own licensed premises. The Chairman asked the meaning of “ market men”? Witness explained that in normal times they had men who came to the collieries, and were employed on the under- standing that if the stall was full they could not get work. Generally, the system was for the deputies in the morning to -see the men when they came in in their own district. They had a little board on which was marked each stall, and they knew the number of men that were working in that stall. When the market man came and the place was full, he was then told to go to another stall. He waited till all the men had come in. When the hooter went at 7 the deputy would say to him, They are short of a man in No. 13 stall, say, and he would go to that stall. But in normal time, on making-up day on Tuesday, and on pay day, Friday, they generally had a very large number of men at the pit, and there was no sale for the market man on that day, and he went up the shaft. They did not commend that system, but they could not get rid of it. There were classes of men who preferred that life to having a regular stall. In normal times these market men worked about four shifts a week. Chairman : If you asked a market man whether he would not rather work a regular six shifts a week, would he not prefer it ?—He would say yes ; but you would never see him again. Since the war, the market man has disappeared. We have not such a thing as a market man to-day; they have turned into regular men since the war. Witness said they were very largely a house and industrial coal district. In Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, and Leicestershire, as far as he could ascertain, the percentages worked out at 37 per cent, steam coals; 39 per cent, gas coals, slacks, etc.; and 24 per cent, house coal. Curtailment of export would throw more coal on to the home market, and they would probably send it to Lancashire. In the figures given the colliery consumption would be in the slacks. Mr. Mitton said he took those 17 companies, and found that the outputs were reduced after the Eight Hours Act came into force on an average by 6 per cent. That was after they had changed their -working conditions until they had adopted other means of getting the coal, the outputs at the collieries came down 6 per cent. Previous to that the regular shift was nine hours underground. They then assumed that supposing the Eight Hours Act was suspended, they would, of course, not get back what they did originally; but, assuming they got back, say, 3 per cent., that would mean an increase of 900,000 tons for the year. After re-arrange- ment, some collieries brought up their output to what it was previous to the passing of the Act, and some did not. In witness’s own case they altered the pits. Some of the old pits were closed, and new pits were started. Witness was questioned by Mr. Smillie at some length. He said that if the output of coal could be largely increased, it would be to the benefit of the nation to get that extra quan- tity of coal, and he certainly thought the men should be paid something additional for getting that coal, but his objection was to a bonus as put forward to induce regular attendance. In that district they had had meetings with the men, with a view of considering an increase in their remuneration in the conditions under which they were at present working, and he thought the situation was fully met by the arrangements which were then under consideration for advancing the wages of the miners to assist them with regard to their present cost of living. Assuming the Eight Hours Act was suspended, and assuming these men were staying back to get a bit of extra coal, and assuming a ganger wTas staying back to gang the coal to the road, and the men were staying to deal with the coal at the pit bottom, they would then make local arrangements with these men, and pay them additional for the additional work done. The manager would probably make an arrangement with the particular stallman who stayed, so that he would not be out of pocket by having to pay some- thing extra to those men who stayed with him, and they would pay the gangers something extra above their ordinary rate for doing the additional ganging before thev came out. They would pay them something additional to the ordinary rate that they paid them for a day. They would not say to the boy : “ We will pay you at the rate of a shift and a half, or a shift and a quarter but “ If you stay back to-night you shall have a shilling,” or whatever it might be. Then the next boy would take the Tuesday night, and the next boy the Wednesday night. They need not have the slightest fear as regards that district that if there was an arrangement made whereby they would get a little additional coal, owing to the suspension of the Eight Hours Act, that they would not be able to come to an arrangement with the men through their leaders very easily on the point of paying additional remunera- tion for overtime done. It did seem to him to be the wrong thing at the present moment for anybody to be limited to doing a certain amount of work, when they were willing to work perhaps 24 hours, or 20 hours, or 15 hours a day in assisting the Government. When the Act was passed it was not altogether met with open arms by some of the men. He could hardly realise at the present moment the organised miners of this country saying that they did not want the Act suspended. In answer to Mr. Pease, witness said that owing to the disorganisation through the men having enlisted, the cost of his pits had gone up considerably, but he had no figures. Witness said they had discussed the question of exports very slightly, because it was a question which did not affect them very much; but it was the general opinion of the coal owners in the Midlands that if any restriction of exports took place, there might be a very serious complication arise, in Norway, for instance, with regard to pit wood and ores. Mr. Hamilton Greig. Mr. Hamilton Greig, who was called on April 24, said he was managing director of William Cory and Son, who control Rickett, Cockerell and Company, so far as the retail depart- ment is concerned, and the Steamship Owners’ Coal Asso- ciation, which is a sort of co-operative society of all the big lines. The combined turnover is about eight million tons of coal per annum, mostly home; not very much export. What export they did was to Port Said, a great deal for the liners there, and to the North of France for Paris, and to Sweden. He said the shortage in London has arisen because the stocks in London got used up, while there were not transit facilities from the northern collieries to London. The process had now been reversed, and they could not get the coal. He said : If the collieries could have worked full time up to the end of last year, and we could have transported the coal, we should not have had the some serious difficulties. Their discharging cranes are not doing the same amount of work, and the steamers, instead of doing three voyages, are probably doing two. It is everything being out of gear that adds to it. My view is, that those concerns in the home market which are most important should be served first. We should have to prove to the satisfaction of some department that the coal was required for public utility purposes, and the boat then would have the preference. The home consumption is entirely governed by the Government demands. I only know in cases like Woolwich, Waltham, Enfield, and places like that, the consumption is tremendously up, and it must be up in Wales. So long as the trade of the world is good, it does not matter what the price is. If you put on a 10s. export tax, I do not think it would stop the export for a time; it would eventually. The Scandinavian countries must have it, and they cannot get coal from America. Supposing we stopped the export to the Argentine, you are going to disorganise the wheat coming back, as the people out there must have the coal. Boats have to go out there, and they have to coal out there. The liners from Australia and New Zealand have to coal in the Argen- tine; they must have the coal to get back. So that really there, is a certain amount must go foreign, whatever the prices are. Mr. Rhodes : The effect of a duty on export coal would entirely depend on the state of trade. Supposing there was rather over-production, as there was in the middle of the eighties. At that time a considerable amount of coal used to be sent to Paris for gas making purposes, in competition with Belgian coal. When the export duty was put on, the effect of that was to put on Is., which was our margin of profit before, and it killed that export trade. That surely must be the result of a tax if it is put on in a normal state of trade? Witness : I should not suggest that an export tax would be possible as a standard way of raising money. I only mean at the present time; if the Scandinavians could not get their coal except at 10s. a ton more than the price to-day, it would still go there, although perhaps in another year’s time it would not. But certain markets cannot stand even a farthing export tax in normal times. Where the competi- tors meet there is always a line. Hardly any coal is going east of Aden now. Witness said he was connected with a Natal colliery, and they had been looking rather closely into that to see whether they could not send Natal coal across to the Argentine. Then came the difficulty about steamers to carry it. There was no trade back from the Argentine