The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE MONDAY, JULY 29, 1918. CAUSES OF COAL FAMINE.

Taihape Daily Times, 29 July 1918, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

MONDAY, JULY 29, 1918. CAUSES OF COAL FAMINE.

(With which is Incorporated The f&ihape Post and Walta-arl-jo News).

Something is amiss with an industrial system that each winter leaves the people of a whole country without the wherewithal for cooking and warmth. As each winter arrives it brings with it the perennial crop of labour troubles that result in a shortage of coal, and invariably, in an incrase of prices. It should not be an insurmountable task to ascertain where the real cause lies, and, when discovered, to remove it. If the bitter privation resulted solely from unreasonableness of miners we are inclined to think the men who manage, or "pretend to manage, our public affairs, would very soon have matters mended. The probability is that the old tricks played by owners in previous years to boost up prices are again in operation. There is the same old demand of the men for a conference with owners, and the same old refusal of owners to meet the men, and the general public has again to go fireless in consequence. It is said that in some Ministerial residences the cook and parlourmaid were down to the last bucket of coal. Of course it is the last bucketful brought in that is meant, for should the Ministerial residence have only one bucket of coal for the ensuing week's cooking something would have to give way. and that something would probably be the men. Coal-owners explain their attitude very neatly and plausibly by saying that we entered into an agreement with the miners that was to hold good for the period of the war. Naturally, they say nothing about the right they claim to double trie price of coal after the men nave been tied down for the period of the war. The men may be a bit unsophisticated, but they are not such lunatics as to consent to being nobbled in that way. If the owners persist in putting up prices after the agreement was entered into the men want wages advanced in a proportionate ratio. The owners say the old agreement is stiir in operation, but it is mighty the owners should go on putting up prices while they boldly declare that coaigetting is costing no more than previously. There are always two . sides to such questions, and while owners tell the story against the men and omit to juxtapose their acts of public spoliation in conference the case they make out is altogether too suspicious and leads to public enquiry. If meeting the men will end the privation, inconvenience and suffering we are being put to. why, in the nameTol all that is sacred don't they consent to the meeting? "Why don't they admit that they know such a meeting would be fatal to their case, because the men would, at such a conference, lay bare their audacious profiteering tactics; that the agreement of a year ago with the men must be kept in operation while they send the price of coal soaring? The public may be largely composed of the simple and the indifferent, but there are few who are deceived by the specious talk used as a pretext for causing universal inconvenience and hardship. We do not contend the men are blameless, they may or may not be, but we do say that owners are blameworthy in that they refuse to confer with the men in an effort to end the trouble. The time is at hand when such questions will be solved by the people themselves; the days of the profiteer are numbered, and we are not quite Sure that State control of all necessities of life would not be much more advantageous to the people than to leave themselves to private ownership, hedged about

v/ith sickening quibble to deceive and exploit. An agreement was made for a certain wage when coal was a certain price a year ago. The whole cause of the trouble is that owners want the old agreement to remain in operation so far as wages are involved, but they desire to go on increasing the price of their coal to the public.

It is hoped the Government will take j a hand at insisting upon the Sheeting | the men ask for, or that the Board of. Trade shall fix coal prices at what they were last year.