July 31, 1914.

THE COLLIERY GUARDIAN.

261

Our own correspondent telegraphs :—Cardiff Coal
Exchange very excited by Admiralty demand for
emergency supplies. During afternoon meeting
representatives of collieries on Admiralty list decided
to stop issue of tipping orders to ordinary shippers.
The Admiralty are taking up all available vessels at
very high freight rates on time charter at 12s. 6d. to
13s. 6d. per ton per month.

A Safety Lamps Order has been issued under date
July 1, 1914. The following additional flame safety
lamps are approved for general use :—Davis-Marstif
lamp (modification of No. 1 lamp made by Messrs.
John Davis and Son (Derby) Limited); Marsaut
K and KB, and Mueseler K and KB lamps (modifi-
cations of Marsaut A lamp made by J. H. Naylor);
’ Cambrian No. 9 lamp (modification of Cambrian
No. 3 lamp made by Messrs. Thomas and Williams
Limited). 'The following flame safety lamps are
approved for special purposes :—Marsaut Kl and
KB1, and Mueseler Kl and KB1 lamps (J. H.
Naylor); No. 7 deflector roadway lamp (R. Johnson,
Clapham and Morris Limited). There are amend-
ments in the descriptions of the Varta electric lamp,
the Oldham shaft and roadway lamps, Cremer
Marsaut lamp No. 15, and Patterson lamps
types Al and A3.

In the House of Commons, last night, the Coal
Mines Amending Bill, introduced by the Home
Secretary, was read a third time without amendment,
as an agreed measure. Viscount Wolmer moved a
new clause, providing that a detonator •should be
inserted only after the shothole had been rammed.
An appliance had been invented which fulfilled the
requirements of the clause. Mr. McKenna said the
clause would impose upon the colliery industry the
use of a particular electrical shot-firing apparatus
which had a monopoly of the market. The report of
his expert advisers was that the appliance was not
one whit safer than ordinary shot-firing carried out
in conformity with the existing regulations.

Judgment was delivered yesterday by Mr. Justice
Warrington dismissing an application which raised
the question whether a return made by the prede-
cessors in title of the plaintiffs with reference to
certain land was “this return” for the purposes of
section 23, subsection 3, of the Finance (1909-10) Act?
1910. The owners of the land did not specify the
nature of the minerals, or give an estimate of their
capital value in the return, which was made on
Form IV. If the return was that referred to in the
subsection, then the minerals were to be treated as
having no value at the time, and, as they had been
sold recently, there would be a considerable increment
value duty to be paid. His lordship came to the
conclusion that the owners had given the information
required by the statute, and the validity or invalidity
of Form IV. was immaterial.

Sheriff Umpherston in the Dunfermline Sheriff
Court has delivered judgment in a series of com-
plaints against the officials of the Fife Coal Company
Limited under the Coal Mines Act. Fines to the
extent of £146 were imposed.

The Powell Duffryn Company, at Aberdare, on
Monday, celebrated the occasion of their jubilee.
A scathing attack upon the new Coal Mines Act was
.made by Mr. E. M. Hann, the general manager.

Mr. Joseph English, president of the Northumber-
land Miners’ Association has resigned from office.

The question of increasing the present standard
.rate by 50 per cent., and therefore altering the basis
rate of 1888, was again considered by the Coal Trade
'Conciliation Board on Friday. The matter was
further adjourned.

The Scottish Coal Trade Conciliation Board met at
Glasgow yesterday (Thursday) to consider the
owners’ claim for a reduction in wages of 25 per
■cent., equal to Is. per day. The meeting adjourned
.until August 7. The position is believed to be more
hopeful.

Judge Amphlett, chairman of the Joint District
Board for West Yorkshire, under the Minimum
Wage Act, has granted certain increases in the
minimum wage for the district.

It is rumoured that the Home Office has decided
.to appeal in respect of certain of the summonses
dismissed by the magistrates in the recent prosecution

against the owners and officials of the Senghenydd
Colliery, for alleged contraventions of the Coal Mines
Act.

The North of England Institute of Mining and
Mechanical Engineers meet at Newcastle to-morrow,
Saturday.

Fifteen miners have perished in a fire which
occurred on Tuesday in the Adolf von Hansemann
pit in the Mengede district, Germany.

The coroner’s enquiry into the Wharncliffe
Silkstone Colliery disaster has again been adjourned.
Important evidence was given on Wednesday by
Mr. G. Blake Walker, the managing director.

At a special meeting of the Kent Coal Concessions
Limited, last week, it was announced that the agree-
ment for the retirement of Mr. Arthur Burr and Dr.
Malcolm Burr had been completed.

At Bargoed, on Thursday, the magistrates decided
that miners employed in a seam of coal upon which
a price list has not yet been fixed, are engaged upon
a day-to-day contract, and thus are not entitled to
the customary notice.

The London coal trade during the week has shown
a distinct buoyancy, and a larger volume of trade
has been done than has been the case for many
weeks past. Best coals continue scarce, and prices
have ruled firm. Second qualities have also sold
freely, but with little improvement in price.

The meeting of the Scottish Con-
The Scottish ciliation Board, held in Glasgow
Miners and yesterday and adjourned until next
their Wages. Friday, marks a critical point in
the industry. Many threads have
led to yesterday’s meeting, and they have ended
in a Gordian knot. The difficulty in dissolving
it is increased because there are several principles
at stake—some of them real and fundamental,
others factitious and unsubstantial.

The main facts of the case may be stated
quite briefly. After many months of considerable
prosperity, the Scottish coal trade has reached a lean
period; prices have fallen, profits have become
exiguous, and costs have begun to bear heavily upon
most of the collieries. The men’s leaders are alive
to the fact that prices have declined; but, as usual,
they affect to see in this not the workings of any
economic law, but the cloven hoof of insane competition
and a panicky surrender on the part of salesmen to
the machinations of the buyer. Their remedy for
the existing depression was to institute a four-days-
per-week working policy.

The employers thereupon threatened to lock out
the whole of the miners. Such a policy is but the
recrudescence, in a more elaborate form, of the old
“ ca’ canny ” policy, which was the primitive device
of the workmen to upset the law of supply and
demand, and has all its defects. It may plausibly
be argued that, if an employer has the indefeasible
right to close down his establishment, when it no
longer pays him to keep open the doors, there
should be conceded to the workmen corresponding
privileges. In the first place, this argument is based
upon a false estimate of the premisses; the workman
has an equally indefeasible right to withhold his
labour when the return is, in his opinion, no longer
adequate, although, if he is wise, he will consider
well the probable consequences of his action. He
cannot claim to exercise a similar right of judgment
where the affairs of his employer are concerned; not
only does the latter provide the capital for the
business—and, therefore, if only to preserve his
assets, has every incentive to continue operations
even when profits are no longer visible—but he is
also responsible for the honourable performance of
contracts and other engagements; beyond this, he
may be credited with some capacity for managing
his own affairs and some capacity for foresight. The
workmen have none of these responsibilities, nor
have they the knowledge. In all matters in which
the power to gauge the future has played a role of
prominence, the trade union leader has repeatedly
shown himself to be inadequate. The logical
sequence of cause and effect in some inscrutable way
seems to elude him.

From the economic standpoint, the “ stop-day ”

policy is unsound. It may be urged with some
reason that a scientific method of adjusting pro-
duction to the needs of the market is not only
ethically sound, but may be beneficial in the long
run to producers and consumers alike. In the
shipping and several other staple industries, the
legitimacy of such a policy is freely recognised,
although it may entail the non-employment of
capital upon which interest has to be paid; a
conspicuous example, for our purpose, is to be
found in the Rhenish-Westphalian coal trade. But
such a method demands statesmanship and foresight
in a marked degree, and great elasticity in its
execution. An arbitrary and crude curtailment of
labour such as that advocated by the leaders of the
Scottish miners could never hope to succeed in
revitalising an industry. The fetish of uniformity is
placed high in the halls of latter-day trade unionism.
We are told that collieries are, in fact, only working
four days a week, and that, therefore, it is only right
that their neighbours should fall into line. Here is
a fallacy which it is scarcely necessary to labour.
One colliery may be working better time than
another, because the seams upon which it is operating
are in better demand; or, contracts may have been
obtained by superior business methods, methods of
preparation, &c. If the attempt to reduce all labour
to a standard of incompetence, in accordance with
the gospel of the street-corner Socialist, is to be
followed by the infliction of similar doctrines upon
industry as a whole, we cannot long keep our place
in the sun. Again, a shortage of coal upon the
Scottish market might result in a desultory rise in
prices ; but how long would this improvement show
f itself ? Only so long as consumers were not in a
position to obtain other supplies. The policy
of Mr. Smillie and his friends would only serve to
embitter consumers and to drive them to the
thresholds of our competitors. In no part of the
country probably has the competition of G-erman coal
been felt so keenly as in Fifeshire, the great bulk
of whose output is shipped to Northern Europe.

We should not have been greatly surprised if the
Miners’ Federation of Great Britain had allowed the
Scottish miners to have their way, for once before,
in 1894, they battened upon their idleness. But the
cost would have been considerable now that sympathy
is so cheap and so catholic, and the costly Glamorgan
“ stop-day ” action is still fresh in memory.

The Scottish leaders have agreed to abandon their
policy, but it may be not inappropriate to emphasise
one point which this proposal seems to illustrate ;
that is the prevailing notion amongst workmen of all
grades that however conditions of labour may be
relaxed and ameliorated, an ever-increasing toll may
be levied upon industry. The day of the lotus-eater
is short, and the end thereof is black with trouble.

On their part the Scottish mine owners have
insisted upon a reduction in wages of 25 per cent.
It may be recalled that at the end of April 1909
the Scottish coal owners intimated their intention of
applying for a reduction, the effect of which would
have been to lower wages from 50 to 37J per cent,
above the basis, the minimum recognised under the
Board. The Scottish miners had previously intimated
that no reduction below 50 per cent, would be
tolerated, and had received the support of the larger
federation. They even refused to refer the matter to
an independent chairman. After many conferences,
in which the Board of Trade took part, an agreement
was drawn up, which provided for a minimum rate
of 50 per cent. The men, however, have repeatedly
affirmed their intention of regarding the existing rate
of 75 per cent, above the 1888 standard as
an irreducible minimum. The position is somewhat
complicated by the fact that the Conciliation Board
agreement of 1909 has outrun its course, but it has
never been determined by the requisite notice from
either party.

Here, again, the men are simply appealing to
force. The Scottish coal masters frankly advance as
one principal reason for their present demand the
increased cost of working due to legislation. When
the Minimum Wage Act was bustled through Parlia-
ment in 1912 they were loud in their protests that it
constituted a distinct breach of the 1909 agreement.
The decline in trade is now accentuating the effect of