February 2, 1917.

THE COLLIERY GUARDIAN.

233

MAXAirfr

For BELTS, ROPES, & WIRE ROPES.

MAXA LTD., 43, Cannon St, London, E.C. J V

J. W. BAIRD AND COMPANY,

PITWOOD IMPORTERS,
WEST HARTLEPOOL,
YEARLY CONTRACTS ENTERED INTO WITH COLLIERIES.

OSBECK & COMPANY LIMITED,
PIT-TIMBER MERCHANTS,
NEWCASTLE-ON-TYNE.

SUPPLY ALL KINDS OF COLLIERY TIMBER.

Telegrams—“OSbecks, Newcastle-on-Tyne.”

*±* For other Miscellaneous Advertisements see Last
White Page.

AND

Journal of the Coal and Iron Trades.

Joint Editors—

J. V. ELSDEN, D.Sc. (Lond.), F.G.S.
HUBERT GREENWELL, F.S.S., Assoc.M.I.M.E.

(At present on Active Service).

LONDON, FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 1917.

The London coal trade has suffered this week in
consequence of diminished supplies and increased
difficulty of delivery to consumers. Wagon delay
added to the trouble.

Hardly any movement in prompt business is
reported on the Tyne and Wear, but holders are
standing out for full recent quotations. The severe
weather, while strengthening the demand for house
coal in Lancashire and Yorkshire, lessened the
transport provision, and made the general position of
the market still more unsettled. Quotations
weakened in Cardiff, and outside the requirements
for the Government little business has been recorded.
No material alteration has occurred in Scotland,
except in the more regular arrival of tonnage.

The standard rate of freight for coals from the
United Kingdom to French Atlantic ports under the
limitation'scheme was advanced on Monday by 20 per
cent., and the rate to French Mediterranean and
Italian ports by 50 per cent. The time charter rates
for neutral tonnage employed in the French and
Italian coal trades were also advanced.

Severe frost has impeded the transport of coal by
road and canal. Great hardship has been experienced
on the Continent.

At a joint meeting of employers and workmen on
the Coal Conciliation Board for the English Federated
area, an application from the men for an additional
war bonus outside existing agreements was con-
sidered. The meeting was adjourned till February 16
in order that the matter might be discussed in the
different districts of the Federated area.

At a meeting of the South Wales Miners’ Federa-
tion at Cardiff on Wednesday, it was decided that
no application be made for the variation of wages for
the ensuing three months, the joint audit disclosing
that coal prices do not justify any advance.

In consequence of the reduced selling price of coal,
the Northumberland coal owners and miners have
agreed that for the ensuing three months the pay of
mechanics, deputies and enginemen shall be reduced
by 6|d. per day and firemen 11 per cent.

A report states that the special audit of the books
of the Scottish coal owners, regarding the increased
cost of production, agrees generally with the figures
previously put forward by the owners.

Travelling medical boards are at work in combing
out the collieries under the new Order. It is stated
that 50 or 60 per cent, of the surfacemen dealt with
are fitted for . general service in the Army. Pro-
fessional men, clerks, and even the ex-cashier of a
bank, have been discovered in the pits. All men
who have entered the mines since August 15, 1915,
have been removed from the list of certified
occupations.

The next meeting of the Yorkshire branch of the
Association of Mining Electrical Engineers will be
held at Wakefield on February 24.

The Monmouthshire Colliery Officials Association
will hold-a meeting on'Saturday, February 17 (com-

mencing at 6 p.m.), in the Technical Institute,
Newport. A lecture on “ Compressed Air,” by Mr.
K. J. Currie, is announced.

A general meeting of the Mining Institute of
Scotland will be held in the Heriot-Watt College,
Edinburgh, on Saturday, February 10, commencing
at 3 p.m. A paper on “The Chalmers-Black Visual
Indicator,” by Mr. J. B. Thomson, will be read.
Mr. D. Ferguson’s paper on “The HurletSequence”
and Mr. D. M. Mowat’s paper on “ The Summerlee
Visual Indicator” will be open for discussion.

The Board of Agriculture is arranging to advise
on the cultivation of vacant land in the vicinity of
collieries, if coal owners will supply particulars of
the situation and area available.

The annual conference of the Labour

Labour Party, which opened at Manchester
Politicians on January 24, was of more than
in Council, usual interest this year, because it was
the first occasion upon which it has
been possible for Labour to express an official opinion
upon its future attitude towards the new political
position arising out of the reconstructed Government.

The majority of six to one in favour of the report of
the executive committee was a decisive vote in
favour of a vigorous prosecution of the war, and an
emphatic approval of the acceptance by its represen-
tatives of high offices of State. Nothing less was
expected, but at the same time there was always the
possibility that the new method of voting adopted
on this occasion might disclose some unexpected
results. At Bristol, last year, the voting took place
in blocks, and the executive committee’s report was
passed by a majority of three to one. This year the
votes of each society were distributed among the
delegates, with the far more satisfactory verdict
indicated above. The composition of the Labour
Party Conference is not generally properly under-
stood, and some people find it difficult to separate
this body from the Trades Union Congress. The
difference, however, jis considerable. The Labour
Party is made up of a number of affiliated societies,
including the trade unions, the local Trades Councils,
local Labour parties, Socialist societies, co-operative
societies, and the Women’s Labour League, which
latter body is an organisation uniting various
women’s trades unions. Thus, the Labour Party
Conference embraces a wider field than the Trades
Union Congress. The Trades Councils are composed
of delegates from the local branches of the trade
unions. The local Labour parties are composed of
delegates from the local branches of the trade unions,
Socialist societies and co-operative societies. The
Socialist societies include the Independent Labour
Party, the Fabian Society and the British Socialist
Party.

It is easy to understand that in so mixed a represen-
tation there cannot fail to be much overlapping, and
even plural voting. It was for this reason that the
Trades Councils were excluded some years ago from
the Trades Union Congress. Plural voting, it may
be assumed, is not regarded by certain of these
bodies as at all immoral if it increases their own
power of control. For many years the Independent
Labour Party have zbeen working to secure this
control, and as one means to that end they have done
their best to get such of. their members who were
trade unionists into official positions in the. local
labour organisations, such as the Trades Councils.
These Trades Councils have been largely manipulated
by the Independent Labour Party, with, whom are
now acting the Union of Democratic Control, formed
since the war for the purpose of conducting a peace
agitation.

It is easy, therefore, to see how the Socialist vote
may be increased in the Labour Party Conference.
The vote of the Trades Councils can often be used to
neutralise the votes of the National. Trade Union
delegates. Thus a kind of schism is effected within
the trade unions, and a double and even a triple vote
is often secured for the Independent Labour Party.

All these attempts to increase their influence have,
however, been of little avail, and the Socialist
extremists have again been made to realise the
insignificance of their efforts. As is * usually the

case, the extremists at this conference were con-
spicuous only in the noise they made.

Except as a vent for pent-up spleen, it is difficult
to see what useful part the Labour Party Confer-
ence play in the general scheme of things beyond
the selection of their executive committee, and even
here the Independent Labour Party has suffered a
serious rebuff owing to an important change in the
manner of electing this body. At their last sitting,
on Friday, the conference decided that in future all
elections shall take place by ballot by the whole
conference, whereby the Independent Labour Party
will lose their present preferential allotment of
three members out of 16. It is satisfactory to find
that the conference have decided to abolish the
disproportionate representation of the Socialist
sections, which will now have to take their chance
with the other organisations.

A great amount of time was occupied at the
recent conference in the discussion of things which
are of altogether secondary importance at the present
time. Very little attention was given to the really
fundamental problems now in the forefront of
national interest. A grand opportunity of evolving
a practical policy for the guidance of Labour through
the difficult times ahead was lost in a. medley of
trivialities which lead nowhere in particular. Yet
the general result was not unsatisfactory, and the
solidarity of the essential components of the British 5
Labour Party in favour of the Allied cause has been )
once more affirmed.	V ’

An important paper on “Principles.*.
Depreciation Involved in Computing the Deprecia^
Of Plant, of Plant,” by Messrs. F. Gill and

W. W. Cook, has recently been read. jh
before the Institution of Electrical Engineers. The *
subject is of very wide application, and touches?:
closely and particularly all questions of sound
colliery finance. The principles underlying this
question are practically the same wherever plant js
installed for commercial gain, but prevalent practice
with regard to making adequate provision for depre-
ciation is as diverse as are the opinions of economists as
to the ultimate factors by which it is governed. In
the first place, the authors define depreciation as
covering both “renewals” and “improvements.”
The term renewals is held to include diminution in
value by reason of.causes outside the owner’s control,*
while the term “improvements” covers economic as
contrasted with physical exhaustion—in other words,
the policy of scrapping old plant before its physical life
is done, in order to take advantage of more modern
improvements. This latter factor is what is commonly
known as obsolescence. It is'clearly most difficult
to compute, and there is much to be said for the
authors’ opinion that it is not a question that should
be left solely to the decision of the accountant, but
requires, in addition, the combined judgment and
co-operation of the engineer and the financier. In
practice, for purposes of assessing profits under the
Finance Act, afourthparty is involved, viz., the surveyor
of taxes, to whom a certain amount of discretion is
permitted with regard to the amount allowed for
depreciation, although too often the more or less
arbitrary estimate of 5 per cent, per annum upon
the value of the plant is assumed to cover this item.
Of course, it is not necessary for the colliery manager
to be diverted from sound practice by the views
of the Income Tax Commissioners, and the amount
shown in the colliery account books need not,
and usually does not, agree with the abatement
allowed on the Income Tax return. With regard to
obsolescence there is no fixed rule, but since 1897,
surveyors have been instructed to take no objection
to the allowance of so much of the cost of replace-
ment as is represented by the existing value of the
machinery replaced, any excess being regarded as an
addition to capital.

‘ The authors of this paper, however, are not con-
cerned with actual practice in the assessment of
depreciation, so much as with the basis upon which it
should be calculated. The annual charges for plant
may be divided into four principal heads, viz., (1)
return on capital outlay—every plant should pay a
return on its own cost; (2) depreciation, including
both renewals and obsolescence; (3) maintenance;