The Dominion. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 1920 THE COAL CRISIS

Dominion, Volume 13, Issue 311, 25 September 1920, Page 6

The Dominion. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 1920 THE COAL CRISIS

Speaking, . 011 Thursday, of the coal situation, the Pkime Minister told the people of the Domin ; jn to be ready for any emergency. That plain : spoken warning derives all possible significance from what the population generally, and not least wage-earners and their families, have already suffered at the hands of the men engaged in the coal-mining industry. The' facts of the case have been stated repeatedly, but evidently they are not yet understood as widely and clearly as they ought to be by the people they so vitally conccrn. The apathy of the community, ■ however, is less extraordinary than the of Labour bodies—organised ostensibly to secure fair conditions of life and work for their members—in face of the outrageous policy of victimisation adopted by the coal-mifiei'6. If the merits of the case as between the miners and the.rest of the community were in any respect in doubt, the entirely , negative attitude of'other Labour bodies_ might bo " understandable. Manifestly, however, no shadow of such a doubt exists. It is certainly not in dispute that the public are being penalised directly and indirectly in a score of ways by the shortage of coal' and by an increase in price (over and above the increase that was bound to occur in any case) for which the miners are solely responsible. During the last few years the price of coal for domestic uso has doubled, it is frequently unobtainable, and when it is obtained very often consists mainly of slack. A few of the moro conspicuous effects of the deliberate reduction of coal output aro seen in the price of gas and the present state of gas supply, in tramway fares, in railway and shipping fares and freights, and in the serious shortage, of cement—a commodity urgently required in connection with the of dwellings. "Go-slow" and irritation strikes account also for the fact that much foreign coal has had to be imported for the railways and for essential industries at a cost in some cases of more than &1 per ton. In these ways and many more the public is paying dearly for the refusal of the miners to do a fair day's work for a big day's pay. Other trade unionists—some of them not half as well off as the miners—and their families are paying a full share in hardship, high prices and actual loss. Why does organised Labour submit to this treatment ? Tho mystery is deepened by the . clear proof afforded that the , miners are not able even to allege ' any real grievance. The paltry ■ pretexts alleged on the occasion of i some rcccnt'irritation strikes speak ' for themselves, and in some cases ' tho coal-workers have not even 1 troubled to invent a pretext. That

truth, of course, is that in regard to wages and working conditions tnc miners are enviably placed as compared with moat other workers in the Dominion. According to a statement by a colliery proprietor which wo published yesterday, they aro earning on an Average, under existing conditions, about "ails, per day. Some of them earn more than ±12 per dag, and many more could easily do the aa:np. At the Statu mine the comfort of the miners is studied in every possible way and they are afforded such facilities for recreation as few workers are ablo to command; and this mine is decidedly the worst of all as a hotbed of "go-slow" and irritation strikes, it is as the official representative of the State miners that Mr. P. C. Webb is complaining of "pin-pricks." This ia the Mn. Webb, formerly in Parliament, who underwent a term of imprisonment for refusing military service, and on las release complained bitterly about the "hardships" ho suffered at a time when New Zealand soldiers were facing death and enduring all the horrors of trench warfaro in Franc© and Flanders. What he means by "pin-pricks" no one knows or could imagine, but he is certainty'right in asserting that tho whole mining industry is "in a bad way of disorganisation." Tho Industry is in an abominably bad way because the men engaged in it havo allowed themselves to be duped and befooled into turning aside from honest and hiphly profitable industry in order to undertake a vendetta against tho community which already has occasioned a vast amount of loss and hardship and threatens to heavily intensify these evils in the immediate future unless the community takes effcctivo measures in its own defence. At this stage it would be interesting to hear from ■ those who speak for organised Labour why they have allowed tho "miners to carry their vendetta so far without raising even a word of protest, much less taking or suggesting any step in defence of the elementary rights of those whom thoy profess, to represent.