KING COAL

Shannon News, 6 July 1926, Page 3

KING COAL

Capital and Labour know all the tricks of the war trade (says a writer in the Sydney "Sun.") They are army generals, military-minded, securing strategic positions, fighting to a finish, then arriving a.t some kind of peace, drawing up some working arrangement, ratified in official arbitration courts, to be contemptuously regarded, like another famous treaty, as 'a scrap of paper" as soon as they have got their wind again. Then there's another war. They don't always know what it's about. They only know they're right. And the community looks on—looks on ana pays, always pays. If only these mililtary-minded men would forget that they are generals, if they would become fiddlers, the community would hav much more fun and have much more less to pay, ana much more to pay with, of course. When coal is the subject of the conflict, the whole community is concerned. Among commercial commodities coal is lung. Everything—what we ealt, what we wear, what we read; our habits of life; our means of livelihood; the facilities of intercourse and travel; the housing of worshippers — everything is involved in the conflict between Capital and Labour when coal is concerned. And always. The agencies of production and exchange rest not day nor nighit. The gates of th e world's market's are never closed. Tire ocean liner's engines are never silent. The furnaces must ever be fed. Electric power stations and gas works never cease their productions of illuminatives. The cloud of smoKe by day is a pillar of fire by night. A fundamental thing is coal. Without British coal Australians cannot even win ashes.