The Dominion. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 1920. INDUSTRIAL STRIFE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

Dominion, Volume 13, Issue 295, 7 September 1920, Page 4

The Dominion. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 1920. INDUSTRIAL STRIFE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

At the moment Britain is threatened with one of the most disastrous and damaging strikes in history. An upheaval is possible which would not only occasion widespread want and misery within her own borders and inflict a serious setback on British industry and on tho external trade which otherwise is showing promising signs of revival, but would operate with farreaching and detrimental effect in all countries which rely in any important degree on the United Kingdom as a market and source of supplies. To this country, for instance, a British coal strike on the scalo now in prospect, and' with its possible developments, would mean an impaired market for produce and diminished shipping facilities, together probably with a serious increase in freights and in the price of all the essential imports which we look to Britain to supply. On these grounds alone the people of New Zealand have an immediate and practical interest in the British mining dispute. At the same time, the .course "of events in the United ■Kingdom, and in America, where similar troubles are being experienced, illustrates clearly and on a bis scale the results of a policy which is being followed only too widely in this country in coal min-. ing and other industries. The British miners are demanding an increase in wages (of 2s. per day in the case o'f adults') and a^reduction in the price of Household coal by 14s. 2d. per ton. Ostensibly they are intent on improving their own lot while at the same time lowering prices to the consumer. The aetuM effect of their policy is to imperil the most important branches of British industry, and pave the way for wholesale unemployment and an indefinite increase of prices. On the facts and figures presented by the British Government, tho atti- ] tudc of the miners is governed by an amazing disregard of consequences. The increase of Ms. 2d. in the price of household coal which they arc now demanding that the Government should remit was imposed early in May. The minors had then just received an increase in wages which raised the cost of coal by 2s. lOd. per ton. The necessity for an increase in the price of coal would have arisen, however, apart from the wage increase. Prior to May coal for domestic purposes was bein/? sold at a loss of lis. 4d. per (on, and a smaller loss was being made on coal supplied for industrial purposes within the United Kingdom. A subsidy to cover these losses was obtained by heavily increasing the price of bunker coal nnd of the limited amount permitted to be exported. Coal for shinping nnd for export amounted in the agereeate to only about onesixth of the total output, and very high prices of course had to be im-

posed to balance the lobs on the other live-sixths of the output. Subsequent to the price increase in May, standard household coal was sold retail in London at 575. 2d. per ton, so that presumably it sold immediately prior to that date at 435. per ton. This latter figure compares with prices of 755. and 80s. per ton charged for bunker coal at coal ports, and much higher prices charged in other ports. At the same time export coal, besides being high In price, was and is severely restricted in amount—it was less by 4.000,000 tons for the first half of this year than during tho corresponding period of 1919—and a serious check is thus imposed upon profitable trade both in exports and imports. The British Government increased the prices of home-consumed £>al in order to place the industry on a. sound economic basis and_ remove a crushing handicap previously imposed on shipping and foreign trade. It is in the hope of securing a reversal of this action and in order to add another link to the chain of wage-increases which must mean price-increases that the_ British miners are now threatening to bring the industries of the United Kingdom to a standstill by declaring a general strike. In proposing to close down all industries should a coal striko be declared, British manufacturers are turning to a desperate remedy, hut tho disease also is desporato. Industrial organisations whose policy is directed not only to a perpetual widening of the vicious circle of wages and prices, but to the imposition of_ conditions fatally inconsistent with industrial and commercial recovery, evidently must be defeated if normal prosperity is to bo restored. The policy of exploitation by extreme factions of organised Labour which is takimr. shape at present in the United Kingdom, but is in evidence also in most other countries, our own included, stands out as the one great obstacle to the revival of production and stabilisation of prices which, would restore prosperity and make | it secure. It is a disconcerting fact that in spite of the appreciable strides Britain has latelv made_ in and trado recovery, prices both of imports and exports are still showing a tendency to soar. For instance, raw cotton imports into the United Kingdom during tho first half of this year' increased by more than fifty per cent, in quantity, as compared with the corresponding period in 1919, but very much more than doubled in money value. On the same basis of comparison cotton exports also showed an extraordinary increase in price, and it is of particular interest at the moment that coal exports for the first six months of 1920, while they declined in quantity by 4,000,000 tons as compared with the same period in 1919, showed an increase of £20,000,000 in value. Much the same tendency is visible in the United_ States in spite of a partial slump in retail prices, and particularly in articles of luxury. Whole--sale prices of necessaries meantime remain high or increaso for much the same reason as in Britain and elsewhere—because they are kept up and made much higher than they need be by futile industrial strife. In the United "Kingdom, though not there only, tho results of a misguided Labour policy are already sufficiently serious. Unless the. miners at the eleventh hour can be recalled in some measure to reason, these results promise to become tragic.