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Hokitika Guardian, 14 June 1929, Page 4

It will be surprising to many to learn that there is a shortage of coal in New Zealand and that arrangements are in hand for importing coal from. England, where there has been a great lack of orders, and thousands of coal miners are out of work, but it is not good for. New Zealand where there is coal in plenty if regular supplies were maintained. Last week there was another of those stupid strikes at Blackball for which the egregious miners were responsible Some little difference among themselves resulted in a stoppage. It was a disputation outside the employers’ concern, but over two hundred men went off work, and did not resume for practically a week. This prank cost the miners over one thousand pounds in wages. That of course, is their own affair, we suppose, but the strike had a far-reaching effect. The dislocation of the industry affected the shipping. The mine produces some ive hundred tons per clay, and the output will be some three thousand tons short. Steamers destined for Greymouth to load as the coal was estimated to be available, had to leave short of freight, or tie up at the port waiting loading. A heavy impost is thus thrown on the shipping companies. These displays of temper by the men under pique among themselves is doing much to undermine the confidence of the public;. The consequence is that with electricity becoming more and more available, people are turning to that source of light, power and heat, and coal is losing its vogue and custom. The repeated strikes aud_ difficulties among firemen has long turned shipping from the use of coal where possible for fuel purposes, and oil lias supplanted it to a tremendous extent. On land, electricity will bs supplanting coal also, and the market will bo growing appreciably less, so that in time to come, even if the coal miners grow more keen to work, there will he less demand for the commodity and obviously less work. All our great industries are so much in the hands of the workmen that it is up to them to play a decent part. These foolish strikes which recur so often, so dislocate trade that they upset confidence and frighten capital front investment, we hear of much money being locked up in ibe banks. The industrial unrest is the chief cause of that, and until organised labour settles down to a right respect Tor the law and observes the law, so that lack of confidence will not retard private enterprise, and national progress in turn will he affected. The Blackball incident is a ease in point of the great injury done to investment and future trading.