688

THE COLLIERY GUARDIAN.

October 1, 1915.

Northumberland and Durham.

Fire at Easington Colliery—Mr. George May's Bequests to
the Mining Institute — Durham Miners and the
Ambulance Movement—Housing at Birtley—“ Baff ”
Saturday Working.

By an outbreak of fire in the Easington Colliery last week,
about 3,000 men and boys were laid idle. Fire broke out
in the lamp cabin, and the building was completely gutted
before the brigade from Houghton-le-Spring was able to
get control of the flames. The chargeman, William Owens,
was severely burnt about the hands and face, and 700
electric lamps were destroyed, thus bringing about the sus-
pension of work.

By the will of the late Mr. George May, mining engineer
and a director of the Bearpark Coal and Coke Company
Limited, the North of England Institute of Mining and
Mechanical Engineers has received £500 in trust to apply
the income to the provision of a “ George May ” prize
or prizes for its students. The deceased gentleman also
left <£500 to the Armstrong College, Newcastle, the income
to be applied for scholarships in mining for students, at the
discretion of the governors. The gross value of the estate
amounted to £186,360 7s. 7d., with net personalty,
£167,564 10s. 9d.

By 308 votes to 262, the Durham miners’ lodges have
decided against supporting the Red Cross Ambulance
Association financially; by 243 to 233, they have defeated
the proposal for a levy of 3d. per week for 40 weeks; and
by 352 to 17 have voted down the levy of 6d. per week for
20 weeks. The executive committee, however, has sent out
a circular which states, inter alia, that whilst the vote is
technically against rendering financial support, it is quite
clear that a large number of the lodges desire to assist
this fine ambulance association, which is doing so much
to help our stricken soldiers on the field of battle, many of
them our fellow workmen from Durham county.” The
committee have come to the conclusion that the whole
matter had better be left to the option of each individual
colliery to make a grant or take a levy as they deem best.

The Chester-le-Street Rural District Council had under
consideration the resolution of the Birtley Parish Council
regarding the housing question in the district. The chair-
man (Mr. E. Cook) stated he had heard it said that 2,000
houses would be required, but within an area of three miles
of Birtley, and within easy access of the railway, at least
5,000 houses would be necessary very shortly. Mr. Mole,
vice-chairman, said he would be opposed to using houses
originally built for miners for new comers. Men working
m the pits were just as much employed on munitions as men
in shell factories. He was in favour of the Birtley resolu-
tion, but they must have from the Government the difference
in the cost of the houses, owing to the high prices of
materials and money. The Birtley resolution was sent to
the Housing Committee, with instructions to push on with
a scheme as quickly as possible.

The secretary of the Dawdon Lodge of the Durham
Miners’ Association has sent a letter to Mr. Corbett, agent
to the Londonderry Collieries Limited, Mr. Lloyd George,
and others, in which he states that at present Dawdon
Colliery is laid idle every alternate Saturday, this meaning
on the present output the lessened production of 20,000 tons
of coal per year. Previous to the Eight Hours Act this
mine always worked on the “baff” Saturday. He adds:
“ Three and four shifts of workmen are continued, no
matter how many have gone, with the result that the hewers
are either called upon to take the young men’s places and
put coal, owing to the lack of putters and scarcity of tubs,
or, where the hewers, for sound reasons, cannot put coal,
the production must continue to decrease. Where there is
a shortage of young men at any mine, the shifts should be
reduced. The workmen would gain financially and
physically, and the mine would be kept in a better state of
repair, which is an important factor for increased output.
The workmen of Dawdon have endeavoured on numerous
occasions to convince the owners on the two principal ques-
tions. When the war bonus was paid to the workmen, the
off-handed workers were reduced one shift every fortnight,
thereby neutralising the effect of the advance, although the
same section of workmen are offered work on Saturday
afternoons and Sunday mornings, while called upon to
remain idle every alternate Friday night. At other centres
workmen are taken before the courts for not working
regularly. There is a strong case against the employers in
preventing other workmen from following their daily employ-
ment.” On the same point of the short working of collieries,
the Newcastle Daily Chronicle states that, from a large dis-
trict in Northumberland, the editor has received letters from
miners to the effect that, whilst the Government is urging
an increased production of coal, they are unable to get a
full week’s work at the colliery. The newspaper ascribes
the slackness to the difficulty and delay in getting export
licences, and quotes in extenso Mr. Thos. Taylor’s speech, on
behalf of the Northumberland coal owners, made at the Home
Office conference on September 2. In that speech, Mr.
Taylor stated that there was a soft coal division and a
steam coal division in the county. The latter, which was
much the larger, exported, he thought, quite 85 per cent, of
its output. In very many cases where export licences had
been approved by the Advisory Committee, three or four days
or more had elapsed ere they were returned, the result being
that the pit had either to lie idle or had to teem down its
coal and pick it up again. There had not been a great
quantity of idle time in the county, although there had been
some; but, if they had not gone on the principle of teeming
down very large quantities of coal and picking them up
again—which was a very large loss to the colliery, about
8d. or 9d. per ton—there would have been a very great
deal of lost time.

Several north-east coast collieries are stated to have
received notices for reduction of prices of coal contracted for,
in accordance with the Price of Coal (Limitation) Act.

Aid. A. F. Pease informed the members of the Durham
County Education Committee at their meeting on Wednesday
that the coal output in the county this year would be
something like 20 per cent, reduced and, therefore, there
must be a reduction in the ratable value. A great deal
of their revenue was based on the output of coal. These
remarks were made apropos of an application by teachers
for higher salaries. The concession was refused.

Cleveland.

Sir James Ferguson on the Cost of Production.

Mr. J. E. Johnson-Ferguson, presiding on Wednesday at
the annual meeting of Bolckow, Vaughan and Company at
Manchester, said : Considering how important it now was
that the output of their collieries and steel works should not
be further diminished, they had felt it their duty recently to

withdraw their offer of allowance to any who might enlist.
The total number of their men who had joined the Colours
up to the present was 3,341, of whom, he regretted to say,
47 had been killed and 186 returned as medically unfit. Of
those men, 2,103 were in receipt of the full allowance, while
the remaining 1,238 were only in receipt of a reduced allow-
ance, or were receiving no allowance at all. Their trade in
the first six months was completely disorganised by the war.
During the last six months it had improved, apd .they were
doing everything in their power to meet the requirements of
the Government; but the outside public failed to realise the
serious effect which a decrease in the output exercised on the
cost of production. The output of all their productions, with
one exception, had fallen off by fully 20 per cent., as com-
pared with the year before, and as compared with two years
before, the total amount of their invoices this year had been
only three-fourths of what it was then. In most of the
branches of their concern he believed their men had recog-
nised their responsibilities, and had done their utmost to meet
the exceptional position in which they and the country
generally were placed; but he did not think that the men
employed in the company’s collieries were doing what the
country might fairly expect of them. A return came before
the directors every month, showing the work done in the
collieries, and after distinguishing the percentage due to
sickness and other unavoidable causes from that which was
unquestionably due to the men’s own neglect, the latter per-
centage, he was sorry to say, was far more than it ought to
be, amounting in the case of some collieries to between 7 and
8 per cent. During the year wages had advanced very con-
siderably, and the war bonus had seriously added to the cost
of production. Another item which the public failed to realise
was the fact that the standing charges did not diminish with
production. The fixed charges on the concern amounted to
over £300,000 a year. When output was diminished, those
standing charges, being spread over the whole production,
seriously increased the cost of the individual article. The
public were told that immense profits were being made, and
the chairman of the Trade Unions Congress stated the other
day that the unrest of organised labour was due to what was
•called the high prices and war profits. That prices were high
he agreed, but in his view the responsibility for those high
prices rested on organised labour. Of those prices, the
wage earners were getting a larger proportion than they had
ever done before. In 1913, 55-8 per cent, of the prices
realised for coal went in wages to the men. In 1915 they
took 63T2 per cent. As to coke, in 1913 wages absorbed
10-61 per cent, of the prices realised. In 1915 they absorbed
14-63 per cent. As to the war profits, there again they
existed to a very large extent, he thought, solely in the
imagination of the ignorant. Whether you compared those
of the past year with those of the year before, or the average
of three preceding years, in either case the profits were down
and not up.

Cumberland.

On Friday, one of the furnaces at the works of the White-
haven Haematite Iron and Steel Company Limited at Cleator
Moor was damped down. It is understood that the same
system will be applied during the temporary stoppage of this
furnace as formerly, the men dividing the shifts at the
remaining furnace. It is expected that the stoppage will
not be of long duration.

The retirement is announced as from October 1 of ' Mr.
Joseph Cartmell, engineer of the Maryport and Carlisle Rail-
way Company. The directors have accepted his resignation
with regret, and at their request Mr. Cartmell has agreed
to act as consulting engineer for a period of 12 months.

Yorkshire.

Fire at Barrow Colliery—Firbeck Colliery—The Sheepbridge
Company.

On Friday last the men working on the afternoon shift at
Barrow Colliery, near Barnsley, had to be withdrawn on
account of an outbreak of fire in the headgear of No. 1 pit.
The grease and oil fed the flames. The situation looked
very threatening, but was tackled with promptitude by the
manager (Mr. Steele) and the engineer (Mr. Peet), who
quickly had the colliery’s system of fire fighting at work, the
men being specially trained for such emergencies. In about
an hour the fire was extinguished, with little serious damage
done. The men on the night shift were able to go down the
pit as usual.

Eleven summonses issued by the Sheffield Coal Company
against employees at the Beighton pit came up for hearing at
Rotherham on Monday. Mr. A. Neal said the company had
selected the men in these cases who were habitual slackers.
They had not only neglected their work in the period men-
tioned in the particulars of claim, but also during the last
12 months. Nominal damages at the rate of 5s. per day
were claimed. The Bench ordered the men to pay the
amounts, plus costs.

The Firbeck Colliery Company are very generally members
of the Sheepbridge Iron and Coal Company. The company
have acquired mineral rights under the estates of Sir
Archibald White, Mr. Jebb (Firbeck), Col. Ramsden, Mr.
Riddall (Oldcoates), Mr. Mellish, and others. Coal has been
proved. It includes a seam 3 ft. 6 in. thick, at a depth of
643 yds.; another seam, 3 ft. 3 in. thick, at a depth of
690 yds.; and the Barnsley bed, 4 ft. 2 in. thick, at a depth
of 833 yds. It is understood that the coal in the company’s
claim amounts to 112 million tons. The company has a
capital of over £300,000, and the establishment of the colliery
may cost over £100,000. To the north-east of the proposed
Firbeck Colliery lies the site of the proposed Bly th Colliery.

References to the prevailing high prices of coal, the loss of
time by the miners, and especially to the importance of
maintaining our exports in order to assist national finance,
were made at the annual meeting of the Sheepbridge Coal
and Iron Company, held at Sheffield on Monday. Mr.
Frederick Fowler presided, and remarked that the war had
caused a reduction in the profits; men had not worked as well
as they previously did. There had been more absentees.
They got such high wages that they could afford to play at
the end of -the week, and they did not work anything like
the full time that they might do. Recent legislation had
also added greatly to the cost of coal production, so that they
had not the same margin of profit that they would otherwise
have had. As to the future, it was very difficult to predict
anything with certainty. He apprehended that soon after
the war there would be a little activity in restoring things as
far. as possible, but there would be no enterprise, and no
activity of trade, in his opinion, for a long time—probably
years—-after the cessation of hostilities. He thought that
the price of coal would keep up, at any rate during the war,
a high figure, but the high cost of production would also
keep up, so that the margin of profit would probably not be
very seriously different from what it was at present. The

coal at the new colliery at Rossington, in which the company
were largely interested, had proved to be 6 ft. thick, and of
good quality. That seemed to be very satisfactory. Of
course, at present they had only just driven through to it, but
he thought they knew sufficient to be able to believe that it
would be a very good coal. The leases of the coal in connec-
tion with the new Firbeck Colliery were now mostly arranged
or in course of being arranged. They had also arranged
with the railway companies to make them a branch railway.
At first they could not get the companies to undertake this,
but after they had promoted a Bill and got it through the
Commons, the railway companies came to them and offered
to make the branch on certain terms, which, of course, they
were glad to accept. The line was now being staked out,
and he hoped it would be proceeded with shortly. — Lord
Aberconway said that, so far from colliery concerns having
made larger profits during the war, in nearly every case they
had been smaller than for the year preceding it. He was
interested, as a director, in at least 15 very important
collieries, and what had happened in the case of Sheepbridge
had happened in every other case without exception—the
profits for the year down to the end of last June were less
than for the corresponding year 1913-14. What might
happen this year it was not for him to say, because, while
prices were no doubt at a higher level now than they were
six or 12 months ago, costs had very materially risen, and
were likely to rise still more .; and the effect of legislation in
cutting down prices at the pit, and restricting the export to
neutral countries, would, of course, be to reduce whatever
margin of profit there might be for the coal owner. He quite
admitted that the public had had to pay, in many cases, very
high prices for fuel. This applied to ship owners, gas com-
panies, and private consumers. But these profits had not
come to the coal owner. The coal merchant, he dared say,
had had his whack out of them, and a pretty big one, too, in
many cases; the miner had had large increases in his wages;
and everybody who supplied stores to collieries had had his
share. The really important point for them was to consider
the position of the coal trade as affecting the finances of the
country during the war. At the Sheepbridge group, which
formed a very important element in the production of coal,
their turnover had been very much reduced. Iron, coal, iron-
stone—everything except finished iron—had shown a reduc-
tion in output. That naturally meant higher establishment
charges, relatively speaking, and a smaller profit. The capa-
city for production had enormously diminished during the
war. From Sheepbridge alone 1,135 of their best men had
enlisted, and the possible output of their collieries had been
diminished by that amount of labour, even though all the
remaining men were working at their best. And what was
true of Sheepbridge was true of every colliery in the country.
He was sorry to say that the men who remained at home
had not always worked their best. They still took their
holidays, and tended to reduce the output per man per day.
Higher wages in the coal trade did not, apparently, mean
better work. He continued : How was this shortage of
output affecting our national finances? Italy, Egypt; and
the Argentine were some of the very best customers for coal
that we had, and if we had been working to the full extent
of our collieries we should have been, able to sell to those
countries the amount that we sold them during the previous
year. Instead of that, we had been unable to deliver the
coal. The result had been that Italy had brought from the
United States more than million tons which she used to
buy from us. Egypt had bought a similar quantity, and
the Argentine also a great deal. Altogether, from those three
countries alone, we had lost sales amounting to four million
tons, which meant at least four million pounds sterling lost
to this country. When they considered the difficulty we
were in in paying huge sums to the United States—sending
gold to buy the munitions of war—was it not the duty of
every Englishman to work his level best to promote our
exports, and thus send goods abroad in exchange for money?
The coal question was not merely one for their own pockets;
it was one affecting the financial position of the country
during the war. With regard to the finances of the com-
pany, they might have very important matters to look for-
ward to. They were engaged in sinking four new collieries,
or about to commence them. There were the Rossington, the
Firbeck, they were going to sink to the lower seams at
Glapwell, and they were about to sink another pit in con-
nection with the Newstead Colliery. These works would, of
course, absorb a large amount of money. They had made
considerable provision—in respect of their new share account
they still expected to get £172,000 before another 12 months
were over, and, with their reserves and the profits they might
hope to make during the year, he expected they would get
the requisite amount. As to what actual profits they would
make, that, of course, depended a great deal on the Chancellor
of the Exchequer. Half of the profits made last year over
and above the profits of the preceding 12 months would be
taken by the Chancellor under the new Budget, and probably
that policy would be pursued next year. He did not think
anyone could complain about that. Like every other English-
man, they must put their hands in their pockets to carry
the war through to a successful conclusion. The reduction
in the exports of coal, due to the withholding of certificates,
made a difference in their profits; it threw a considerable
quantity of coal back on the market, which had to be sold
here at lower prices. Finally, they had the Act of Parlia-
ment which limited the price of coal to the buyer to a figure
of 4s. above that of the corresponding period of last year.
So that, taking things on the whole, their prospects of making
money were not by any means very brilliant. He did not
say they were bad, but he did not think that anybody need
expect that coal property would produce next year more than
a fair average return to the shareholders.

Lancashire and Cheshire.

Capt. Harry Roscoe, son of Mr. Walter Roscoe, J.P., of
Fern Cottage, Worsley, has been promoted to captain in the
2nd Batt. 1st North Midland (Staffordshire) Royal Garrison
Artillery.

A number of municipal authorities in Lancashire are
appointing sub-committees to meet the local coal merchants
with a view to endeavouring to secure that coal prices to
ordinary consumers shall be fixed at as low a rate as possible
during the coming winter.

Aid. John Tomlinson has accepted an invitation to allow
himself to be nominated for the mayoralty of Darwen in
November next. Aid. Tomlinson, who was Mayor of the
town in 1900, and also in 1901, is 69 years of age, and is
actively associated with the coal trade. He has been the
chairman of the Manchester Coal Exchange, and he is well
known throughout Lancashire.

Despite strong representations which have been made to
them on the subject, the executive council of the Co-operative
Wholesale Society (Manchester) have decided not to proceed
in the matter of acquiring coal mines of their own.