A REMEDY FOR THE COAL TROUBLES

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 305, 20 September 1919, Page 7

A REMEDY FOR THE COAL TROUBLES

Sir—For Some time there has been a Jot of trouble through shortage of cool. .Miners striking, and tho go-slow policy— and many suggestions made for tho Government to take over some of tho mines, lint would they be any better if they did, seeing, the poor management tho Government makes of any other work it has. in hand? It would be merely . waste of money. But if the Government, ■lid bike over a coal mine, I would suggest that it should erect proper Nrracks at the mine for prisoners undergoing terms of hard labour and work the mine with them. I think it would Telievo tho country ot'a j;reabdeal of tuis coal famine, iuid stop a lot of the "goslow" policy and othor evils. I see in an Auckland paper a writer commenting on the fact that prisoners there find the hardest'task ,>whEe in prison that of putting in their time with nothing to do. I would like to givu an instance of what can be done in' this way with proper management. Some sixty years of more ago in .Cape Colony, under the Boer Government, they made all the- roads then by prison labour. Also look at tho fine accommodation thf-y have there for shipping, all done by prison labour. Tho time. I lived there they had an average of some twelve hundred prisoners there making the breakwater, or harbour, and the fine docks for ships. This shows what can lie done by good economic «overnmeiit; but of course- the old Boer Government that was then in office did not tritle with matters as we do. There was no (letting a "drank" off with a caution—as we do. Anyone tho worse of drink, by the flaw thore then, got a month's hard labour on tho'roads, and if he came back again sol it doubled. No (routte with drink there then, and the different races all pure, and Capo Town a fine, clean town. But look at it to-day. Tho mixture of races, the town full of this mixed mongrel race, and drink as if there was little check to it. No wonder if many of the. Ouflanders in Johannesburg during tho Boer War would not fight for the British Govemmei'i; as the.y snid thev had the best G(p-"i .- ment in the-world as they were. Howover, to leave that alone: would it not be worth our-Government to try something of what J Fiiggcsf, and reJie've the country to u great" extent of being over-ridden by n class that wu't work themselves nor l':et others work— and we have not a Government with'the power to deal properly with I hem.—l am, etc., OLD POGIE.,