October 15, 1913.

THE COLLIERY GUARDIAN.

781

The question of the comparative merits of resident
and non-resident rescue brigades was again discussed
at a meeting of the Mining Institute of Scotland at
Edinburgh on Saturday last.

At the annual meeting of the South Staffordshire
and Warwickshire Institute of Mining Engineers, to
be held at Birmingham on Monday next, a paper
with reference to the inundations at the Coppice
Colliery will be read by Mr. G. M. Cockin.

Interesting reference to the causes and effects of
the reduction in output of coal was made by Mr. L. R.
Fletcher on Tuesday in his presidential address to the
members of the Manchester Geological and Mining
Society.

Mr. T. Y. Greener, in his presidential address to
the North of England Institute of Mining and
Mechanical Engineers, at Newcastle on Saturday last,
dealt with the manufacture of coke in by-product
ovens. A paper by Mr. S. Dean entitled “Modern
American Coal Mining Methods with some com-
parisons,” was also before the meeting.

The inquest on the 14 victims of the Exhall
Colliery fire of September 20 was concluded on
Monday. The jury found that death was due to the
men inhaling CO caused by the accidental over-
turning of a lighted lamp. They also made certain
recommendations regarding the use of naked lights
near pit shafts.

A deputation of the principal London coal mer-
chants waited upon the President of the Board of
Trade on Tuesday, to discuss the limitation of prices.
The conference was adjourned for a fortnight.

(tfie Cardiff Chamber of Commerce intend opposing
the colliery owners’ new terms of net cash in 14. days.

The strike at Grimethorpe Colliery, near Barnsley,
has now been settled after a week of idleness. The
question involved was that of non-unionists.

An advance of 18f per cent, above the 1888 wage
basis is being asked for by the Scottish miners.

A meeting of the Coal Mining Organisation Com-
mittee took place yesterday at the Home Office, and
discussed a proposal for pooling all railway goods
trucks. It is stated that a conference with the
railway managers is to be arranged.

It is rumoured that the Government intend to
prohibit the export of iron and steel.

Two men were killed and nine injured by
the breakage of a haulage rope at the Norton
Colliery of Messrs. Robert Heath and Sons on
Wednesday.

In Part I. of the Report of the Coal Mining
Organisation Committee (Cd. 7939), the number of
persons who joined his Majesty’s Forces from the
collieries in North Staffordshire up to the end of
February 1915, and the percentage to the total
number employed, were, by an error of tabulation,
given as 3,023 and 9*7 instead of 7,009 and 22’6,
which are the correct figures.

The following announcement is made by the War
Trade Department:—In order to prevent speculative
applications for licences for the export of coal and
coke, it will be necessary on and after November 1
next for each application for a licence to be accom-
panied by a declaration to the effect that the proposed
shipment is in pursuance of an existing contract or
in execution of a definite order for coal or coke. A
revised form of application is now in course of
preparation, and will contain the form of declaration

The Finance (No. 3) Bill, embodying
The Finance Mr. McKenna’s Budget proposals,

Bill. has now been published, and one or
two new points are adumbrated
which are worthy of more than passing notice.

According to clause 24 of the Bill, employed
persons are to be assessed and charged to income-
tax in respect of the remuneration arising from their
employment in each quarter of the year. This
provision does not affect the current income year,
but employers will note with a certain degree of
solicitude the method devised for the collection of the
tax in such cases. Where any person fails to pay
the tax assessed and charged on him quarterly
within one month after demand, the Commissioners
may throw the onus of collection upon the employer,
who will be required “to pay over to the Com-

missioners, as the remuneration of the person
employed becomes due, such proportion of that
remuneration (not exceeding one-quarter thereof) as
may be required by the notice until the amount
due is satisfied.”

It may at once be agreed that where heavy
taxation is levied upon comparatively small incomes,
the instalment system of collection is a wise and
necessary provision; and that any means of
lightening the burden of collection is to be welcomed.
But it is to be noted that if the employer does not
succeed in recovering the amount due, the latter may
be “recovered as a debt due to his Ma jesty from the
employer.” The stamp system adopted under the
National Insurance Act had this advantage over that
now proposed, in that the contributor was able to
recognise much more readily the fact that he was
indebted to the State rather than to the employer.
A good many colliers may be called upon to pay
income tax, and we can foresee that much trouble
will be caused to the employer where he has
to deal with the robust obstinacy that sometimes
characterises the workers in mines. If he cannot
clearly distinguish the authority of the State in these
proceedings the miner is very likely to call into
operation certain well known, if disreputable
methods of obstruction.

The provisions of the Bill in regard to the excess
profits tax do not tally exactly with the statements
made at an earlier stage in the discussions, and some
of the alterations are important. The meaning of
the Bill in some respects is not very clear, but light
has been thrown upon these by the Chancellor in his
reply to his critics in the House of Commons on
Wednesday. In arriving at the pre-war standard of
profits, it is not proposed to take an average of the
three preceding years, but to give the taxpayer the
choice of any two out of the three preceding years; as
before, for these profits there may be substituted profits
at the rate of 6 per cent, on the capital. In some
businesses this rate of profit is obviously inadequate,
but provision is now made to refer such cases to a
Board of Referees. A further and material con-
cession is that which entitles a company to set off a
loss in a subsequent “ accounting period ” against
profits taxed in an earlier period and to recover from
the Treasury. This in part meets our point that,
owing to the fact that the accounting period is one
that includes any portion of the year 1914 during
which we were at war, heavy taxation may be levied
upon those who have actually incurred considerable
losses directly owing to the war. Nevertheless, it is
clear that, although profits made in 1914 have
already been dissipated, the tax on those profits will
have to be paid out of the 1915 profits or losses, the
only cold comfort being that the Treasury will be in
debt to the taxpayer.

We are glad to see that provision has been
made in the Fourth Schedule to the effect that “in
estimating the profits no account shall be taken of
income received from investment except in the case
of businesses such as those of investment, trust, or
assurance companies, where the business to a great
extent consists of the making of investments.” Some
well-directed colliery enterprises in this country have
made a practice of investing large blocks of undivided
profits in subsidiary companies. This is a commend-
able method of replacing capital, and it would have
been manifestly unfair to charge such investments
twice over.

It is regrettable that nothing has been done to
deal as a whole with the question of wasting assets.
The Commissioners of Inland Revenue have power
to modify the provisions of the Fourth Schedule, in
cases where there has been postponement, as a
consequence of the war, of renewals or repairs, or
exceptional depreciation or obsolescence of assets
due to the same cause, and the applicant who is
dissatisfied with an award in such cases may appeal
to a Board of Referees. Otherwise the schedule
provides that “no deductions for wear and tear or for
any expenditure of a capital nature for renewals, or
for the development of the trade or business or
otherwise in respect of the trade or business, shall be
allowed, except such as may be allowed under the
Income Tax Acts.”

In this respect, as in some others, the position of

the colliery is strikingly unfortunate, and, as we
have already pointed out, a colliery that has been
unlucky enough to reach the productive stage at the
beginning of the first accounting period is very
heavily rated. Sir Arthur Markham, we venture to
say, went astray in dealing with such a case-
Taking the case of a colliery paying a dividend in
the first accounting period, he put it that the
company would get 6 per cent, plus half the profits
earned, the other half presumably going to the
Treasury. But is this way of looking at the matter
strictly fair ? Although allowed to reckon its profits
at the rate of 6 per cent., the company has not
handled the sum which this represents in hard cash,
and the profits in the accounting period to an extent
represent the deferred profits unearned during the
sterile period of development. These barren years,
in the ordinary way, would be distributed over the
life of the pit, but the first productive year is
frequently better financially than those that follow,
owing to the accessibility of the coal and the high
efficiency of plant newly installed, to say nothing of
the desire to reward the shareholders for their
patience.

We have already hazarded the opinion that, in
many respects, the “controlled” establishment is
more happily situated than those outside the aegis of
the Minister of Munitions. There may be special
reasons for maintaining the financial stability of
munition establishments so long as the end of the
war is not in sight; indeed, we are strongly of opinion
that taxation should be levied upon surplus emolu-
ments, and not upon trading profits that should be
employed in increasing and cheapening output. It
is for this very reason, and for no other, that we
advocate some restraint in the case of the coal mining
industry, which, by accident or obtuseness alone, has
failed to be included in the category of a “ controlled ”
munition industry.

Dr. Collis, H.M. Medical Inspector
Stone DllSt of Factories, has favoured us with a
and Mine	copy of his Milroy Lectures (1915)

Hygiene.	entitled “ Industrial Pneumono-

conioses, with Special Reference to
Dust-Phthisis.” Almost concurrently we have also
received Dr. James Moir’s paper on “Recent
Investigations on Dust in Mine Air,” embodying the
results of experiments carried out for the South
African Committee on Miners’ Phthisis Prevention.
Although much has been written upon this subject
from the coal miner’s point of view, it is one which
still demands the closest attention, both on account
of the incompleteness of our knowledge concerning
and the insidious character possessed by' dust
diseases. These two papers, however, possess an
importance of their own, since they undoubtedly
carry us a step farther in our methods of distinguishing
dangerous from harmless kinds of dust.

It is scarcely necessary to traverse again the
familiar ground respecting the distinction between
silica dust, on the one hand, and most of the other
industrial mineral dusts on the other. It is crystalline
quartz dust alone that has so far been proved to be
responsible for miners’ lung disease. But we are
perhaps too apt to conclude that the immunity of
coal miners in the pa-st from these dust affections
has been general rather than comparative. Dr.
Collis, however, shows that there is a marked
difference in the incidence of bronchitis between the
miners of Northumberland and those of Lancashire,
the ostensible reason being that originally advanced
by Dr. Oliver, who has suggested that even silicosis
of the lungs may occur amongst miners working in
seams containing siliceous partings, or where there
is much “ripping” of a stony character. So we
find also that the mortality from bronchitis and
pneumonia is high amongst the miners of South
Wales as compared with those of the Midland coal
fields. If, however, the nature of the “ripping ” is
so surely reflected in the mortality from lung disease,
another and most serious question may arise, as we
have before pointed out and, as the Eskmeals reports
admitted, if promiscuous and extensive stone dusting
is carried out in dry mines without reference to the
character of the dust employed for the purpose.
The matter was also brought forward at a recent