COAL TROUBLES

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 869, 13 January 1930, Page 8

COAL TROUBLES

SERIOUS POSITION IN AUSTRALIA ECONOMIST’S VIEWS Although he does not wish to appear a pessimist. Dr. F. R. Mauldon, lecturer on economics at the Melbourne University, told a SUN representative this morning that serious as Australia's coal problems were at present, they were yet only in the initial stages. T)R- MAULDON. who is a ihrough passenger on the Aorangi. i 8 o n his way to Harvard University, for * year's research work into American commercial and industrial orsauisa. tions. His book on the economics of the Australian coal industry has recently been published. The fundamental difficulty facing the coal Industry iu Australia was tfi c fact that there were far too rnanv collieries participating iu its shrinking coal trade. Altogether there were 240 collieries. and he thought that fully a hundred of them were not required. Since the war he considered that Australia's trade was 3,000,006 tons less. A Royal Commission of inquiry into the conditions of the industry was held in Sydney recently, and he pare evidence before it just before he left Its report is to be brought down In February but. whatever recommendations were made, he thought it was almost certain that they would be received unfavourably in either one quarter or another. The principal difficulty facing the industry arose through a slow accumulation of an over-capacity to produce coal in relation to a shrinking market that shrinking being part of the general contraction of coal throughout the world. Aggravating the diflieulty in Australia, said Dr. Mauldon, were forces that had been working to drive up and maintain prices out of relation to the trend elsewhere. The quarrelling that had been going on during 1929 after all was only concerned with the acceptance or rejection of expedients which could only make temporary differences to the situation. Referring to the New South Wales scheme of subsidising the industry Dr. Mauldon said that the resistance of the miners had left the situation just about where it was 16 months ago. Nobody liked being pessimistic, but he could not see anything but cor., siderable trouble in store for the in. dustry.