October 29, 1915.

THE COLLIERY GUARDIAN.

883

heavy stocking result from continued inadequacy of
the tonnage supply. The market is irregular and
depressed, and prices vary according to the circum-
stances of each transaction. Continued improvement
and rising values form the main features of the
Scottish coal trade.

Judgment was reserved in the Court of Appeal on
Tuesday in an application of the Bullcroft Main
Collieries Limited and Sir Arthur Markham against
the Don Coal and Iron Company Limited and others.
The question involved raises an important point in
the matter of colliery royalties.

The annual meeting of the North Staffordshire
Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers was
held at Stoke on Monday, when, in addition to a
presidential address by Mr. J. Gregory, an interesting
paper was read by Mr. T. C. Futers on “ The
Organisation of the British Mining Industry.”

Another death has taken place as a result of the
Pennant Hill Colliery explosion, which occurred on
Friday last. The inquest has been formally opened,
and adjourned until the 22nd prox.

During the discussion on the Finance Bill in the
House of Commons, on Thursday, Mr. McKenna
stated that the Government proposed submitting a
resolution dealing with royalty owners who received
additional profits owing to increased price.

The Yorkshire Miners’ Association have submitted
to the local coal owners a proposal by which during
the period of the war disputes may be settled
without resort to strikes.

A meeting of the Scottish Coal Trade Conciliation
Board was held on Monday to consider the miners’
claim for an advance in wages of 18J per cent. No
agreement was arrived at, and the meeting adjourned
for a fortnight.

Yesterday (Thursday) a deputation of the South
Wales Miners’ Federation waited upon Sir Bichard
.Bedmayne, Chief Inspector of Mines, to protest
against the employment of foreign miners in local
collieries.

The application of the miners’ section of the Coal
Conciliation Board for England and North Wales,
for an increase in wages of 5 per cent., came before
the Board yesterday. It was decided to refer the
matter to the independent chairman, Lord Coleridge.

Sir Laurence Gomme, acting as arbitrator appointed
by the Board of Trade, sat on Tuesday to hear
representations by the men in the matter of the
disputed points in the new Conciliation Board agree-
ment for South Wales. His decision was reserved.

A Thomas Hawksley lecture on “The World’s
Sources of Fuel and Motive Power ” will be
delivered to the Institute of Mechanical Engineers
to-day (Friday) by Dr. Dugald Clerk.

Prof. David, of Sydney University, who was a
member of the Shackleton Antarctic Expedition, has
enlisted, and is going to the front as geological
expert to the Mining Engineers with the rank of
major.

A telegram from Sydney (Australia) states that
the employers having refused to grant an increase in
wages, the coal lumpers there have gone on strike.
Sammonses have been issued against the men’s
union. For the time being the export of coal has
been prohibited.

Some exceedingly important points
The Finance emerge from the debate on the
Bill. Finance (No. 3) Bill in the Com-
mittee of the House of Commons,
this week, and, owing to the prolixity of Parlia-
mentary discussions, it is well to draw brief attention
to them here.

On Tuesday, the provision imposing upon employers
the duty of collecting arrears of income tax from
their workpeople was strongly criticised from all
sides in the House. The objectionable character of
this proposal was pointed out at some length in the
Colliery Guardian of October 15 (p. 781), and the
attack in the House of Commons was led by Sir
Joseph Harmood-Banner, Mr. Laurence Hardy and
Sir Clifford Cory, indicating that the coal owners,
who have to deal with much larger bodies of highly-
paid workers than any other class of employers, are
sensible of the friction that would be created

by adopting this method of tax collection.
Almost equally determined was the attitude
of some of the Labour members, and Mr.
Hancock, secretary of the Nottinghamshire Miners’
Association, declared that there was nothing to
which the Midland miners were more strongly
opposed than to deductions from wages at the pay
office. We are unable to conceive any authoritative
source from which Mr. McKenna may have derived
the inspiration for this proposal, which looks rather
like a hasty alternative to a poundage system of
collection, against which the arguments are certainly
weighty. The Chancellor has acted wisely in
consenting to call a conference of employers and
workmen, and to examine points of view which he
apparently neglected to ascertain in the first instance.

Nothing in the long and interesting debate on the
excess profits tax, which occupied the second session
on Wednesday, will create greater interest among those
engaged in coal mining than the intimation which
the Chancellor gave that he intended to deal
specially with royalty owners. He said he proposed
to amend the mineral rights duty at a later stage.
For some time the belief has been gaining ground
that efforts would be made to attach a much larger
portion of the incomes accruing from mineral royal-
ties, but no indication has been forthcoming as yet
as to the mode of procedure. Mr. McKenna declared
that royalty owners “get additional profits simply
owing to the rise in prices, and therefore they ought
properly to contribute to this taxation” ; this, how-
ever, can only be true in certain cases where royalties
are paid on a sliding-scale basis. Where they are paid
on a fixed tonnage basis, the royalty owner does not
benefit from an increase in the selling price. On the
other hand, there are these points to be remembered,
namely, that (1) the royalty owner is now mulcted in
indbme tax at the top of the scale ; (2) his income
has been affected materially by the reduction in
output: and (3) the future of his property has in
some cases been endangered by the policy of taking
the cream off the coal, which has been instigated by
the Government as a means of repairing the
temporary deficiency in the supply of fuel. Never-
theless most people will agree that royalties in all
these circumstances are a fit and proper subject for
taxation.

Two amendments were definitely made on Wednes-
day ; the increase of the standard exemption from
taxable profits from £100 to £200 is a concession to
the small business, employing a small amount of
capital, whilst the alteration of the commencement
of the war period from September 1 to August 4 is
more truly consonant with the facts, and may remove
some inequality of treatment.

There has been some doubt as to whether establish-
ments “controlled” under the Munitions Act are
liable to taxation in respect of excess profits, in
addition or apart from the surplus taken by the
Government under that Act, generally assumed to be
in the region of 80 per cent. Mr. McKenna has
now made this point clear, for he says the excess
profits tax does not operate during any period a
controlled firm is in existence as a controlled firm;
that is, any profits earned before July 2 at the
earliest are liable to be assessed for taxation, and
consequently all such firms, during the first accounting
period, are liable.

The general discussion on the tax was of a highly
important character. Many of the speakers are men
of vast business experience, and it should not be lost
upon the Government that whilst there is no desire
in commercial circles to whittle down the tax or to
evade it, yet there is a genuine mistrust of the
system adopted to carry it into effect. These doubts
were admirably crystallised by Mr. Butherford in
the following passage :—

I know concerns that did bad trade in 1911-12-13 and
which had a normal year in 1914, yet they have to pay a
heavy tax. I know of concerns that did very well in
1911-12-13 and they did very well in 1914, and made a lot
of money, but as it does not happen to be in excess of the
average of the two years previously they have nothing to
pay. It seems to me that when you come to state the
effect of the comparison between those two periods in that
manner it will be obvious that there is something
intrinsically wrong with this clause as a method of
assessing this tax.

That applies to a question of general principle;
when we come to particular applications, it is clear
that specific instances of injustice must arise.
Sir Clifford Cory put forward the case of the
Cardiff coal exporters. He pointed out that exporters
in South Wales are accustomed to make foreign
contracts in October or November for the ensuing
year ; their profits are dependent upon the subsequent
course of the freight market. It happened that 1911,
1912 and 1913, the three standard years, were all
unfavourable to the exporters, but during the first
half of 1914 freights were falling, and profits, as a
result, increased. After war was declared, however,
freights again advanced, and many exporters, from
this and other causes, were heavily hit. Sir Clifford
also referred to a point to which attention has
already been directed in these columns—namely, the
money spent in the pre-war period in developments,
from which a return was only obtained in 1914. He
said:—

Many concerns, such as colliery companies, invest their
profits in new developments, and I have one case in my
mind in which all the new pits were sunk entirely out of
revenue. They limit their profits to 10 per cent, for a
number of years, and they let all their excess profits be
used for new developments. I also know a number of
companies which have done all their developments by
watered capital, and it is quite clear that the former is a
much sounder way than the latter. If you are to be
penalised for laying out your money upon new develop-
ments of that kind, it is a direct discouragement to people
to spend money out of revenue instead of spending it on
their enjoyment, as they have done in 1914.

The Committee did not get much satisfaction out
of Mr. McKenna on these points; all he did was to
rely on the provisions for the refund of tax in
subsequent lean years, the lenity of the referees who
will be appointed to consider special cases, and the
general elasticity of the datum line. But he showed
that the case of the newly-developed colliery was one
that did impress him, for he agreed that it was a
subject for discussion, and hinted that in such cases
the taxpayer might be allowed to substitute for
6 per cent, on his capital a higher standard rate of
profits. Beyond that he pointed to the allowances
that have now been made with regard to excessive
wastage and depreciation of machinery and other
similar assets.

We are gratified to find that the Chancellor . is
taking this broad-minded view of these points. One
cannot ignore the difficult position in which he is
placed; the money must be found, and any criticism
that can usefully be made now can be directed with
the sole object of “ tempering the wind to the shorn
lamb ”—that is, doing as little injury to the trade
and manufactures from which alone the revenue of
the country can be obtained.

Some years ago an amusing essay
Units and appeared in the Times tilting at the
Systems. modern predilection for “ scientific
jargon.” This propensity for sur-
rounding a vocation with an impenetrable hedge of
strange words and phrases is really no new growth,
although the moderns are more disdainful than their
forbears of the “well of English pure and undefiled,”
and more prone to the compounding of Greek and
Latin roots, with little regard for the harrowed
feelings of the scholar; for the strange assortment
of obsolete measures which is thrust on the back of
every copybook before the undiscerning child, with
just as little discernment on the part of the educator,
is a legacy from the early days of commercial enter-
prise, when every trade had its guild and its
symbols, and represents the same clannish outlook
that in the coal mining industry has given us half-a-
dozen different words for a “hewer,” as many for
“small coal,” and numerous other factors in the
business of coal mining.

The only difference between the old jargon and
the new is that the former appeals to the lover of
the antique, the latter to the votary of extreme
modernity. In either case it is an affectation, born
of the desire to be thought not of the common
herd. Select communities, indeed, are not unlike
burglars and members of the quasi-criminal class,
such as mendicants, patterers and chaunters, who,
by the employment of “back slang,” “rhyming