July 14, 1916.

THE COLLIERY GUARDIAN.

71

with. 17s. 7’6d. in June 1915. Otherwise divided, it
realised the following:—Steam coal, 28s. 5*7d. ; gas
coal, 20s. 6*Id. ; anthracite, 26s. 10*6d. ; house-
hold, 27s. bld. ; other sorts, 23s. 6‘3d. The
average value of the coke exported was 34s. 3*07d. per
ton, and of the manufactured fuel 27s. 10 2d. per ton.

A general meeting of the South Staffordshire and
Warwickshire Institute of Mining Engineers will be
held in the University, Birmingham, on Monday
next, at 3 p.m. Dr. E. A. Newell Arber will read a
paper on “The Structure of the South Staffordshire
Coal Field, with Special Reference to the Concealed
Areas and to the Neighbouring Fields.”

The Consultative Committee of the Board of
Education, in an interim report on scholarships for
higher education, recommend new annual grants
from public funds of £329,500 for technical and
scientific training.

The Port of London Authority have given notice
that to meet the cost incurred by the grant to their
labourers of an additional war bonus, a further
increase of 7J- per cent, will be made in the dock
dues, rates, and charges on shipping and goods as
from the 24th inst.

The Ministry of Munitions has issued an Order
which includes specified descriptions of metallurgical
coke, pig iron, steel, bar iron and high-speed tool
steel as war material.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer adheres to the
scheme laid down in the Finance Bill for estimating
Excess Mineral Rights Duty. He claims that the
right principle is to charge according to the value of
the minerals, and not according to the amount
worked.

The Miners’ Federation Conference this week
passed resolutions in favour of the nationalisation of
mines, the payment of day wages instead of piece-
work rates, an amendment of the Workmen’s
Compensation Act, and other matters.

A shortage of tonnage is still evident in the freight
market, but quotations are more inclined to recede
than advance.

Particulars of certain new types of safety lamps,
approved by the Home Office, appear in this issue.

The annual conference of the Miners’
Miners in Federation of Great Britain, held
Conference, this week at Buxton, furnishes as
usual an opportunity for delegates to
air their views and to ventilate grievances cf a real
or imaginary nature. In the stress of the country’s
efforts to subordinate every consideration to the one
object of bringing the war to a successful conclusion,
the address of the president, Mr. Robert Smillie,
was perfectly correct in tone and temper, and we can
only trust that his efforts and those of the executive
will continue to have a good influence upon the
output of coal by diminishing absenteeism, checking
petty strikes, which are still too frequent throughout
the country, and generally bringing the men to a
sense of the great responsibility resting upon their
shoulders. While commenting upon the increased
cost of living, Mr. Smillie stated that the purchasing
power of the sovereign has fallen to 12s 4d., whereas
in a reply to a question in the House of Commons on
Tuesday last, Mr. Pretyman gave the value as 15s.,
as compared with 17s. 3d. a year ago. Mr. Smillie
gave the Board of Trade as his authority, but his
figure is obviously too low. When prices are
fluctuating so continually as now, and the value of
certain commodities is appreciating at so rapid a rate,
the purchasing power of a sovereign may be almost
anything, depending solely upon the selected index.
If we base values upon the prices of the common
necessities of life, such as bread, dairy produce, meat
and groceries, the increase in the cost of living, con-
sidering all the circumstances, is as yet nothing very
serious, and still less warrants either the scathing
condemnation launched upon capitalists, who,
naturally, come in for tjie whole blame for the rise
in prices, or the revolutionary proposals for which
they have been made a pretext. The miner, with his
high rate of pay and war bonus, was never better off
than now, and generally throughout the country the
wage earner is, comparatively speaking, doing
thoroughly well.

In these circumstances, all the attention of the
Federation should have been concentrated upon the
one object in view—viz., to win the war. It was a
magnificent opportunity for this body to show their
complete grasp of the historic crisis through which
the nation is passing. Such a course would have
been of inestimable value in bringing home, to those
miners who have not yet realised it, the gravity of
the present position, and the urgent need for the
exercise of every exertion in supplying coal for the
nation and our Allies.

But the occasion seems to have been lost, for
instead of following the more elevated line suggested
in the president’s address, the meeting proceeded to
consider the reactionary proposals of the Lancashire
section, who advocated the policy of the substitution
of day wages for all coal getters in the place of piece
rates. It is difficult to conceive of any step which
would have a more disastrous effect upon the real
interests of the miner and upon the output of coal
from the pits. The supporters of this revolu-
tionary suggestion base their claim upon the absurd
contention that the cutting price lists are manipu-
lated in the owners’ favour by employing herculean
bands of stalwarts to open seams, and to show by
their example what can be done in the way of
cutting coal. The best reply to such a suggestion is
the fact that the men themselves, at least the better
element among them, do not desire the abolition of
piecework, and their weekly earnings are a sufficient
refutation of the plea that the piecework standard
has been put too high. If it were true that super-
men are deliberately selected to test new seams, and
to impose an impossible task upon the average
collier, there would certainly be no display of
eagerness to work in these seams; and the pathetic
picture of the collier broken in health in trying to
keep level with the strong men who set the pace was
altogether misleading.

The notion that all men should be on a footing of
equality is one of the crudest and narrowest of
socialistic doctrines. We believe that this view is
not held by any but inferior workers, more or less
jealous of the greater earnings of their more virile
comrades. Levelling down, however, is a decadent
proceeding, more particularly at the present time,
when the opposite process should be the aim of
every true Britisher.

There was a long debate on the Workmen’s
Compensation Act, and resolutions were carried in
favour of fixing a minimum amount of weekly
compensation, and of enforcing payment from the
first day of injury. A discussion took place upon
the suggested amendment of section 1 of the Act by
striking out the words “ arising out of and in the course
of his employment f and substituting “ if in any
employment personal injury by accident is caused to a
workman his employer shall be liable to pay compensation^
In regard to this, it must be confessed that employers
may often have been ill-advised in contesting claims
upon this ground; but that is one of the disadvan-
tages of all Acts of this kind. When the law steps
in, sentiment departs, and it is impossible to have it
both ways.

We will postpone further comments upon this
conference and its rather incongruous proceedings
in the midst of the grave anxiety through which
the nation is now passing.

The claims of British forestry are
British	just now being put forward, not by

Forestry	any means for the first time, as an

and urgent necessity from motives both
Pit Props, of economy and prudence. Prominent
amongst the exponents of what ought
to be our national policy in this matter must be
placed Sir John Stirling Maxwell and Prof.
Sir W. Schlich. Not since 1909, when Mr. Lloyd
George inaugurated the Development Commission,
has the position of forestry in this country occupied
so conspicuous a place in the national programme.
The stimulus has been supplied by the war, and the
resulting shortage in the supplies of imported
timber. It should not, of course, have needed such
a state of affairs to galvanise into activity a Govern-
ment which, six years ago, determined to set aside a

grant from the Development Fund for the promotion
of schemes designed to cultivate the resources of the
country, to institute schools of forestry, to purchase
and prepare land for afforestation and to set up
a number of experimental forests on a large scale.
Of the money set aside for these purposes but little
has been used. Sir John Stirling Maxwell shows
that the Development Commissioners have failed
completely to make use of opportunities which
would, in the present emergency, have defrayed
their cost during the past two years. It should not
have needed a great war to revive public interest in
British forestry. Long before the war began there had
been a growing pressure in the demand for timber in
European countries, for, notwithstanding the immense
supplies available in Russia it is quite uncertain how
long they will last under the rapid depletion that has
taken place in recent years. After the war had been
only a few weeks in operation there began to be
some concern with regard to the supply of pit props
for the coal mines of this country. Sir W. Schlich,
writing in the current issue of the Quarterly Journal
of Forestry, states that enquiries were made as to the
quantity of home-grown pitwood that could be relied
upon, the rate at which supplies were coming
forward, and whether the amount of pit wood in the
country was sufficient for the needs of the collieries
until normal conditions were restored after the war.
In the result it was shown that the total existing
quantity would be used up in the course of two
years, exclusive of existing stocks and further
supplies from abroad. With the increasing prices
that had to be paid for pitwood, there was, therefore,
a real prospect that some collieries might even be
compelled to close down in the event of a prolonga-
tion of the war. It is to the credit of the Govern-
ment that such a disastrous possibility was foreseen,
and soon after the declaration of war the useful step
was taken of sanctioning a reduction of the railway
rate on pitwood consigned to the mines. The
railway companies are believed to have fallen in
with this innovation, so far as to have declared their
willingness to quote special emergency rates for long
distances upon application, and an increasing quan-
tity of home-grown mining timber is being used in
the collieries, with a further depletion of our forests,
for the replenishment of which no adequate provision
is yet being made.

The actual amount of exhaustion due to this cause
is only imperfectly shown in our statistics. The
annual returns of the Board of Agriculture give the
actual shrinkage in area, but this is entirely mis-
leading because there may be an almost complete
removal of serviceable wood without any appreciable
reduction in area. Let us take Ireland, for example,
where the decline in forest area for the ten years
proceeding the war was less than 6,000 acres. In
the year immediately preceding the war there were
felled in that country 574,859 trees, of which 304,214
were used for mining purposes. Exports of pitwood
from Ireland are made from Cork, Waterford,
Wicklow, Wexford and Tipperary, and the timber,
mainly larch, is used almost entirely in the
Lancashire and Scottish coal mines. In South Wales
preference was given before the war to the produce of
France coming from Bordeaux and Bayonne, and
generally it may be said that Scotch pine, and spruce
from Russia and Scandinavia are more highly appre-
ciated for mining use than the more quickly grown
larch, which can be cut at from 35 to 40 years of age.
The requirements of the different coal mining
districts vary somewhat. In some cases pit props of
small dimensions—viz., from 2J to 3 inches in
diameter, can be used; while in other cases props
are required up to 9 or 10 inches in diameter. There
are corresponding differences in length. It is clear,
therefore, that if the United Kingdom is to be in a
position to furnish a larger proportion of pit timber
than formerly, a great deal more planting must be
done. Before the war we used about 15 per cent, of
home-grown pit props, and we imported 85 per cent,
from abroad. The total annual consumption of pit-
wood in the coal mines of the United Kingdom is
estimated at 41 million tons, the value in normal
times being about £5,000,000.

The question has hitherto been mainly considered
from an economic standpoint, but it has also its